2021-05-06 13:05:47 GMT2021-05-06 21:05:47(Beijing Time) Xinhua English
WASHINGTON, May 6 (Xinhua) The birthrate in the United States fell 4 percent last year, marking the biggest annual decrease in decades, suggesting the coronavirus pandemic has taken the country s already existing downward trend into overdrive, The Washington Post reported on Thursday.
The latest provisional data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed the birthrate in 2020 dropped for the sixth consecutive year. The steepest decline occurred in the last part of the year, when the first babies conceived during the U.S. outbreak would have been born.
Before the pandemic, American women were already having fewer children, doing it later in life or choosing to not have children at all. The newly released data indicated a sharpening of that trend. The U.S. birthrate fell across races, ethnicities and almost all age groups.
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Early in the pandemic, there were jokes about quarantines prompting a baby boom, but roughly nine months since COVID-19 triggered a national emergency in the U.S., experts are reporting a baby bust.
There will be significantly fewer newborns this winter and in 2021.
Whether social distancing urged romantic partners to meet less, or financial strain and child care uncertainty caused families to hit pause on having kids, the coronavirus pandemic has led to a decline in both planned and unplanned pregnancies, experts said.