Page 81 - IJPS-10-3

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

the pandemic rather than an outcome of the pandemic since
it is similar in size to drops observed before the pandemic.
Four findings stemming from the data in a context
where fertility was sharply declining before the pandemic
are as follows:
(i) There was a short-lived fertility plunge or baby bust in
the first month of the pandemic.
(ii) There was a pandemic-associated deceleration in the
fertility decline.
(iii) A baby boom occurred later during the pandemic,
especially contributed by families that already had
children.
(iv) An anomalous baby bust (11% drop) took place among
immigrants, with a reduction in births delivered the
first 9 months of the pandemic (i.e., among mothers Figure 5. Monthly general fertility rate of native-born women in Costa
Rica adjusted for seasonality from 2015 to 2022
who were already pregnant at the pandemic onset).
The initial pandemic shock stemming from the first used in this study. Fitting a six-year pre-pandemic trend
full month of the pandemic, which decreased the fertility as counterfactual seems problematic since fertility decline
rate for January 2021 by as much as 24% among some accelerated substantially starting in late 2018. A 6-year
groups, has been also observed in high-income countries trend overestimates fertility in 2020 and will probably also
(Sobotka et al., 2021, Aassve et al., 2021). Given this overestimate the fertility during the pandemic years. In
commonality with other populations and that this decrease contrast, the three-year trend in the figure fits well with
was substantially larger than previous and subsequent the monthly rates in 2020 and shows similar pandemic-
declines, it is reasonable to link it causally to the onset of associated results to those described in this article: a
the pandemic. fertility plunge in early 2021, a rebound in late 2021, and a
The deceleration of fertility decline after the plunge of deceleration of decline in 2022.
early 2021 could be triggered by the pandemic, but could also The decision to exclude births delivered in December
be induced by other causes, or could even be a determinist 2020 from the “pandemic period” may be questionable
development that had to happen: since all downturns must given that about 5% of preterm babies were conceived
end at some point, perhaps it was the time for fertility in in April or even May and that about 50% were probably
Costa Rica to stop declining. All of these speculations were conceived after the declaration of a public health emergency
made based on the counterfactual chosen to represent the by the government on March 16. Figure 5 shows that the
absence of the pandemic. If there are reasons to believe that GFR in December 2020 is halfway between the GFRs of the
the declining trend in fertility would have ceased in 2021, two adjacent months, suggesting a partial pandemic effect.
the fertility decline observed in 2021 would be a baby bust January 2021 is definitely the first full pandemic month for
caused by the pandemic. If, on the contrary, the chosen fertility analyses.
counterfactual is that the previous declining trend would
have continued at the same pace, there would be more A recent study of the lowest-low fertility (1.3 TFR) of
observed than expected births and, therefore, a baby boom Costa Rica in 2021 and 2022 postulates that it might be
caused by the pandemic. No data were available to test in driven by the decision to postpone pregnancies among
this study the plausibility of these counterfactuals. young people. The study showed that if young couples were
going to have a cohort TFR of close to two children, period
The latter counterfactual is the one often used in the
literature estimating pandemic impacts (Aassve et al., fertility should stop falling soon and would even increase
2021, Bailey et al., 2023, Cozzani et al., 2023, Kearney (Rosero-Bixby, 2023). In this scenario, the deceleration of
fertility decline observed in 2022 would not be a pandemic
& Levine 2023). Some variation of the “interrupted outcome but a rebound of postponed births. There is no
time series” approach is often used to estimate a pre- recent research about childbearing preferences among
pandemic time trend over several years. Said trend is then younger generations in Costa Rica with regard to the
extrapolated as counterfactual (or expected outcome) postponement hypothesis.
to the pandemic period. Figure 5 shows the results of
applying this approach to the monthly GFRs since January The subtle baby boom contributed by families already
2015, as a sensitivity check to the simpler analytic method having several children—and, to some extent, also by

Volume 10 Issue 3 (2024) 75 https://doi.org/10.36922/ijps.1310