The COVID-19 pandemic has been affecting the US population at large. One study from U.S. Census data shows it has also caused birth rates to decline further.
Experts say there has always been a decline, but today COVID has made people more hesitant when it comes to procreating.
Local mother of three Naara Meas says prices are increasing and a new addition to their family is something they just can't afford.
Meas said, “Climate change, new diseases… the economy is not making it any easy.”
With the current times, she said things are just too uneasy.
“Society is making it hard”, said Meas.
In January, the labor department reported the consumer price index, which measures how you pay for goods and services... it reached the highest level since 1982, and a lot of it can be tracked to COVID-related issues.
Professor of Economics, Robert Tennant said, “Job certainty issues, increased inflation…we have the highest inflation growth rate that we’ve had in 40 years.”
As people put a pause on growing their family, the decline in birth rates will bring problems in the near future experts said.
Professor Tennant said, “I would say if we continue to decline ... the challenges that would occur would be it would take fewer and fewer current working people to cover the retirement benefits like social security. So for it to remain viable a higher rate would have to be taxed to people for it to still exist.”
The U.S. Census revealed a downturn in births in the winter of 2020-2021, and while the Federal Reserve of Dallas shows Texas women are still having more babies than women in other states .... they found that the birth rate dropped significantly since 2007.
