The relationship between staying at home during the pandemic and the number of conceptions: A national panel data analysis

Abstract

hether the COVID-19 pandemic has changed fertility patterns is still an open question, as social isolation for long periods can impact the number of conceptions in many ways. We combine administrative data on all recent births in Brazil with daily data on individual location to estimate the relationship between the share of individuals staying close to their homes in each week and the number of conceptions in that same week, comparing municipalities with different social isolation patterns during the first semester of 2020. We find that conceptions unequivocally decline when social isolation increases. The effect is stronger for women who are between 21 and 25 years old and more educated, as well as for richer, larger, and more urban municipalities. COVID-19 is likely to change fertility across countries depending on the behavior of the population and on the lock-down measures implemented to fight the pandemic.