Page 76 - IJPS-10-3

International Journal of
Population Studies COVID-19 and fertility in Costa Rica

9 months later (Sobotka et al., 2021; Aassve et al., 2021; economic shock, especially in April 2020, and their living,
Cozzani et al., 2023; Pesando & Abufhele 2023). This initial commuting, and socializing arrangements underwent
baby bust was reversed in subsequent months in what has dramatic changes, against a backdrop of precarity and
been called a “pandemic roller-coaster in births” (Sobotka panic shaped by a flood of alarming news.
et al., 2023).
The occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic coincided
However, among middle- and low-income populations, with the time when Costa Rica’s fertility rate was already
the early baby bust could be counteracted by increases in declining rapidly toward very low levels. The total fertility
unwanted pregnancies that resulted from a lack of access rate (TFR) decreased from 1.95 to 1.56 between 2009 and
to contraception during the pandemic (Aassve et al., 2020; 2019 (INEC, 2020). The TFR fell again to 1.41 in 2020,
Bailey et al., 2022). The exclusion of women from the labor the 1 year of the pandemic, but with almost all births
st
market and an increase in home-based female work could conceived before the pandemic started in late March. This
also raise fertility rate (Osiewalska et al., 2022; Lappegård pre-existing declining trend in fertility must be noted
et al., 2023). when assessing the pandemic’s impact. In the first 2 years
Using microdata from the administrative birth registry of the 9-month lagged impact of the pandemic, 2021 and
maintained by the electoral authority of Costa Rica – a 2022, TFR was 1.31 and 1.29 (INEC, 2018, 2019, 2020,
middle-income country located in Central America 2021, 2022).
with a population of five million people, this paper aims It is noteworthy that the sizable contribution to the
to address the knowledge gap concerning childbearing national birth rate by immigrants, mostly Nicaraguans, holds
during the COVID-19 pandemic, as compared to the significant relevance to the overall fertility in Costa Rica.
scenario in highly developed countries. It has a strictly In 2019, 22% of births were contributed by foreign-born
descriptive purpose of documenting the fertility trends mothers. In fact, a higher fertility rate has been recorded
in Costa Rica during the pandemic period from 2020 to in the immigrant women from Nicaragua compared to the
2022 in comparison with trends in previous years. Analytic native Costa Ricans (Rosero-Bixby et al., 2002).
methods are deliberately kept as simple as possible.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Costa Rica began on 2. Data and methods
March 20, 2020, when the country had documented a The data analyzed and presented in this paper were derived
benchmark of 100 cumulative cases. The government from the administrative micro-database of registered births
declared a public health state of emergency on March in Costa Rica through December 2022, maintained by the
16 and ordained measures to contain the spread of Supreme Electoral Court (Tribunal Supremo de Elecciones
the disease, which essentially led to the closure of the in Spanish, TSE). Although the TSE is an electoral agency,
country during the Easter week, from April 5 to 12, 2020. it is, according to the 1949 Constitution, the office in
The measures included sealing the borders; prohibiting charge of registering births, deaths, and naturalizations
gatherings; closing schools, churches, theaters, parks, and of keeping the corresponding ledgers and databases.
stores, restaurants, and bars; restricting circulation; and The TSE also issues a unique identification number to each
transitioning jobs to home-based formats. The outbreak Costa Rican linked to the birth record. This is the number
was essentially contained during the April-May period. of “cédula,” the ubiquitous identification card that all Costa
The first wave of the pandemic peaked in September and Ricans carry.
the number of cases remained high until November 2020;
a second pandemic wave, caused by the deadlier Delta It must be noted that official data concerning vital
variant peaked in mid-2021, and a third wave (Omicron statistics are issued by the Costa Rican National Institute of
variant) peaked at the end of 2021 and the beginning of Statistics and Census (INEC), which is a different agency
2022 (Ritchie, 2020; Rosero-Bixby & Jiménez-Fontana, from the TSE. However, this paper was not based on INEC
2021; Rojas & Romero 2022). data due to availability issues, as well as issues regarding
the denominators to compute rates in subpopulations. The
The policies implemented to contain the virus in April TSE databases are public by law, but the INEC microdata
were successful in holding back the pandemic but greatly is not. The birth counts reported by the two databases are
affected the lives and livelihoods of the population (PEN, almost identical (INEC reported 0.2% fewer births than
2021). The official unemployment rate increased from TSE from 1918 to 2022).
12% to 24%. Households below the poverty line increased
from 21% to 26%. Growth in gross domestic product fell The TSE database includes little information regarding
to −4% in 2020, compared to the positive rates of 3 – 5% each birth, comprising the date, place of delivery, and,
during the previous decade. Costa Ricans suffered a major importantly, the identity (the cédula number) of the

Volume 10 Issue 3 (2024) 70 https://doi.org/10.36922/ijps.1310