Hard Hit: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on childbearing in the Hispanic/Latino population

Objectives

The alarmingly disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on the working age segment of the Hispanic/Latino population motivates our focus on determining whether the COVID-19 pandemic differentially impacted the fertility of Hispanic women compared to non-Hispanic White women.

Methods

Leveraging state-level birth count data, we perform an interrupted time-series (ITS) analysis using state-specific, piece-wise regression models to assess pandemic impacts on fertility across five different pre- and post-pandemic periods for U.S.-born Hispanic women, immigrant Hispanic women, and non-Hispanic white women. We present difference-in-differences (DiD) estimates to assess the impact of the pandemic on births to each group of women and difference-in-difference-in-differences (DDD) estimates to determine if U.S.-born or immigrant Hispanic women experienced more pronounced pandemic fertility impacts compared to their non-Hispanic White counterparts.

Results

There was substantial variability in both pre- and post-pandemic fertility trends by state and population sub-group. We find that immigrant Hispanic women in nearly all states had fewer births than expected from March 2020 through February 2021, irrespective of pre-pandemic fertility trends. In contrast, non-Hispanic white women in most states experienced a “baby boomlet” from December 2020 through December 2022. U.S.-born Hispanic women have a more variable pattern during this period, with fewer births than expected in about half of the states, and a “baby boomlet” in the other half. Relative to non-Hispanic whites, however, both groups of Hispanic women experienced more pronounced depressive pandemic impacts on fertility at the height of the pandemic (December 2020–February 2021).

Discussion

Mirroring disproportionate impacts on mortality, in the case of fertility, in nearly all states, foreign-born Hispanic Americans experienced pronounced and disproportionately negative impacts on births from December 2020 through February 2021, followed by a baby boomlet through December 2022. Establishing these patterns is a critical piece of a full accounting of the extent of the pandemic's influence on our country's demography, particularly how it has altered the population processes of such hard-hit sub-populations as Hispanic Americans.