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latinometrics OP t1_ivp5dkp wrote

Source: The COVID Baby Bump

Tools: Excel, Rawgraphs, Affinity Designer

Fertility rates — aka how many babies the average woman has — have been declining for decades. Data from the US showed, to the concern of many, that the downward trend accelerated during 2020.

But research by Martha Bailey, Janet Currie, and Hannes Schwandt, who looked at the data more closely (and kindly shared it with Latinometrics), explains the why behind the drop. Their work also revealed a surprising COVID aftermath in 2021.

During the pandemic, there was a drop in childbirths by Chinese women as the US shut down Chinese travel in early 2020. A few months later, as the Mexican border closed, a decline was seen in Latin American women's childbirth.

Keep in mind the 9-month pregnancy period; it tells us that this disruption was very likely due to women not being physically present in the US to give birth to their pre-conceived children. What's most surprising about the data the Economists presented is what starts happening in 2021. Latin American women (and also US-born women, to a lesser extent), for the first time in 15 years, reversed the trend of declining births.

By December 2021, the researchers observed an 11% positive deviation from the 2015-19 trend by Latin American women, proposing stimulus checks and increased remote work as potential explanations for the bump. What does this imply? Under the right conditions, many women are eager to become mothers.

Unbelievably for people in the Western Hemisphere, China continues to struggle with lockdowns; thus, births by Chinese women in the US are still well below the 2015-19 trendline.

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685327592 t1_ivp5ver wrote

If by "boom" you mean a small uptick from the tend was observed in one demographic then sure...

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NobleCaptalist t1_ivpdy8w wrote

No graphs for India . Millions of desi newborns would feel left out.

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ADx7_ t1_ivplf9p wrote

Hmm so thats what you picked up from this graph?

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Golden_Mandala t1_ivqct3k wrote

Graph would be much better with labels, tic-marks on the horizontal axis.

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Lacinl t1_ivqmuum wrote

There's not enough data to tell, but I know there were people complaining about Chinese women coming to the US to have a kid so that the kid can get dual citizenship.

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Lacinl t1_ivqn1i7 wrote

From the information given, it's probably looking at all children born in the US, since they're US citizens, and then going back and seeing where their parents are from. It doesn't specify citizenship or resident status for the parents. This would count births from tourists and undocumented immigrants.

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APJYB t1_ivqn92p wrote

This account frequently just smashes graphs together and extrapolates distant conclusions.

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PadraigHPearse t1_ivqzgua wrote

The Birth Tourism industry still hasn't recovered.

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huitu34 t1_ivrk62c wrote

Maybe there are just more LatAm women in the US now? That graph+title leaves me slightly annoyed.

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dkki t1_iw110n6 wrote

Due to China’s lockdown, fewer Chinese women can travel to US for giving birth to their child and gain US citizenship.

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