On Sunday, I included a link to an article on provisional birth data from the UK Office for National Statistics.
It suggests there was a temporary decline in babies conceived during the first three months of the first lockdown in 2020, but then the fertility rate rebounded to levels above those seen in previous years.
What happened in Canada?
For the first four months of 2020, births recorded are on the low side of those for previous years, more or less in line with the trend in previous years. Then there’s a significant decline (not as dramatic as it appears as the baseline in the figure is 25,000 births.) It may be that part of the decline from April onward, prior to nine months after the start of the pandemic lockdown, results from problems with registering a birth.
StatsCan does not yet have monthly birth figures available for 2021; their quarterly birth estimates are:
The second to fourth quarters of 2021 show a rebound in births from 2020 as in the UK, while the long-term trend of the declining number of births continues.