Baby Bust Generation?

We have talked a great deal, here at the New World, about possible baby busts and baby booms resulting from this endless pandemic.  Both could happen, in different parts of the world.

Now CNN passes on a CDC report suggesting that the US is in for a baby bust.  After years of birth rate declines as much as 2% annually, the US saw a decline in births in 2020 which was double that - a decrease of 300,000 births, year-over-year.  As we've seen before (see "baby bust" links above), people who have the ability to do so, put off having children during troubled or uncertain times.  We shouldn't be surprised that this is proving true on America, as well.  And this is just the start: 

...experts have noted that in terms of total births and fertility rates, the real impact of the pandemic will be seen in data from 2021, when all babies born will have been conceived after the health crisis began.

So what does this mean?  Demographers could probably write a book to answer that question, but right now the aspect seems hazy:

The decline in births caused by the pandemic, coming after years of decreasing birth rates, could add up to significant shifts in society, Levine says. "The fact that it's coming on the heels of a lengthy ongoing decline in births exacerbates its impacts. In reality, it's not the 300,000 fewer births once (as a result of Covid), it's the hundreds of thousands of fewer births every year that's likely to have substantial impacts on society," he says.

"Those include things like economic activity, the solvency of our retirement system and significant other social implications."

Think about the huge societal impacts we saw after the baby boom in the 1950s.

"This," Levine says, "has the potential to be the opposite of that."

The opposite of the baby boom - which took a decade or more to develop?  We'll see.  Meanwhile, we have general and vague analysis.  I'm waiting for the book.