Europe's Ongoing Birth Decline. NewsWire

NewsWire: 3/31/21

• New December and January data continue to show falling birth rates across much of Europe, including a sharp decline in Spain. Yet not all countries follow the trend: In Finland and the Netherlands we are seeing slight YoY increases. (Financial Times)
• NH: Birth data from Europe continue to trickle in. They mainly confirm our findings of a pandemic baby bust.
• The last time we wrote about births in France and Italy, the data were limited to certain cities and hospitals. (See “Pandemic Baby Reaches Italy and France.”) Now we have country-wide numbers.
• In France, births fell 7% YoY in December and dropped 13% YoY in January. France entered its first lockdown on March 12. Moving forward nine months and five days, the average length of gestation, gets you to the last two weeks of December. Thus, the effects of lockdown would only show up starting in the second half of the month, explaining why the December drop is smaller than the one in January.

• As for Italy, births in December fell precipitously: 21.6% YoY. And for all of 2020, there was a 4.8% decline. In Italy, the first European country to be slammed by Covid-19, several northern cities were already locking down as early as February 23. The rest of the country followed suit on March 9. So a much larger impact on December is to be expected.
• New data from Spain also show that births declined 20% YoY in both December and January. Keep in mind that Spain was next in line after Italy. Spaniards first learned about infections in the Canary Islands on January 31. Again, by mid-February, much of Spain was hunkered down even though a nation-wide lockdown was not declared until March 14.

• Interestingly, both the Netherlands and Finland went against the trend. These countries recorded slight YoY birth increases for January. Why? Presumably, it's because Covid-19 didn't hit the Nordic countries as early.
• Other factors may have been at work as well. In the Netherlands, Prime Minister Mark Rutte on March 16 delivered an address to the nation announcing that the country would not resort to lockdown but would pursue (like the UK and Sweden at that time) a "herd immunity" strategy. Rutte later changed his mind, but the Dutch at the time were reassured. Finland, on the other hand, benefitted from very early action to quarantine travelers and track down new cases. As a result, Finnish deaths per capita have always ranked near the bottom of European nations (along with Iceland and Norway). It is likely, again, that most Finns were not alarmed.
• But these two countries are probably more the exception than the rule. The overall picture from Europe points to a pandemic baby bust which may last through most of the rest of 2021. We’ll keep you updated as more data are released.