• Alison Gemmill

This project concerns the pandemic “baby bust” and a critical demographic question of how the pandemic will influence long-term fertility patterns. Will birth rates remain at low levels, will they drop further, or will birth rates eventually rebound, and if so, when? This study addresses the primary data limitations by using the second cross-sectional Guttmacher Survey to rigorously test specific hypotheses and evaluate relationships in a multivariable framework. The two aims are: (1) evaluate the relationship between COVID-related impacts and fertility preference among reproductive aged women during an ongoing pandemic after adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics; and (2) explore how the pandemic affected women’s decisions to delay or change their target number of children and whether these reasons varied by sociodemographic characteristics.