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“It also has its good points!

We finally got closer again! ”- a quote from Loriot's famous film“ Pappa ante Portas ”.

A year ago, right at the beginning of the pandemic, many a forecast reminded you of this very quote.

People, it was said in March and April, would finally get back to basics.

The result: A baby boom was predicted, as if Corona were an evening power failure that you let pass by candlelight in bed.

That was, as you now know, pure transfiguration, pure wishful thinking.

A look at the reports that are now increasingly arriving around the world on birth rates confirms this.

The pandemic hit the previously saturated societies like a shock.

And states of shock are not likely to bring about children.

Corona is a contraceptive.

The baby boom not only failed to materialize, it turned into a kind of baby dell.

Sometimes it is dramatic.

France reports 54,000 fewer children in January than in January 2020. A decrease of 13 percent and the lowest value since 1945. Spain assumes a quarter fewer children in this period, minus 23 percent for December and January.

Italy's statisticians speak of a fifth less: for the first time, fewer than 400,000 children are likely to have been born there.

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The dent is also there in the UK.

From there one reports strong declines, also from the USA with many children.

Even the Chinese who are said to have been so successful in the pandemic are experiencing a historic collapse in the birth rate.

Exceptions?

Yes, there are some rather poorer countries and in a few industrialized countries where the crisis struck with a time lag.

But here the effect is likely to be delayed as well.

The number of artificial inseminations has risen sharply

Anyone who thinks that the desire for babies is not that great right now is wrong.

New figures show that for many, the desire to have children is greater than the worry.

Source: WELT / Viktoria Schulte

There are still no final figures for Germany.

But the reports from many municipalities suggest that despite short-time working benefits and little additional unemployment, there is no boom in this country either, but the numbers are also falling.

In Italy there is already talk of a “demographic recession”.

The term “recession” is to be understood broadly, socially and economically.

Soon the corona crisis, then medically long overdue, will have an impact on education, the labor market and even later in the pension funds.

The dent remains for decades.