RAPID CHANGES IN BIRTH COUNTS IN BRAZILIAN MAJOR CITIES DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
Resumo
Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, Brazil has been among the
countries that have been heavily a ected by this novel disease. From March
2020 onwards, records of deaths in Brazil increased as the number of COVID-19
infections skyrocketed. Consequently, many studies have tried to explain how this
illness has a ected the overall number of deaths since the start of the pandemic,
and have examined the question of whether mortality related to COVID-19 has led
to reductions in life expectancy. However, at the time of writing, there have been
few empirical analyses of the e ects of the pandemic on births. In this study, we
sought to investigate whether the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the recent birth
counts of six large cities in Brazil by assessing the most up-to-date vital statistics
data that are available. Using data from the municipal health departments of these
cities, we compared the number of monthly births from October–December 2020
and January–March 2021 with the number of new-borns in similar months and
years before the pandemic. Our results show that there was a strong decline in the
number of births in some of the cities analysed, and that most of the reductions
occurred among women around the age of 30 years old. It appears that because of the
uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, women have been postponing or foregoing
the realisation of their fertility intentions, which may have led to a temporary baby
bust in some cities of Brazil. However, the COVID-19 pandemic was not found to
be associated with faster reductions in births in all Brazilian cities. Indeed, in the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte, the decreasing trend in birth counts appears to have slowed down, or even reversed.
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