by Kevin Coupe
We appear to be in the middle of a pandemic baby boom, suggesting that when people were working from home over the past few years, they weren't just working from home.
Axios reports that new numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicate that " that the birth rate for U.S. mothers increased by 6.2% relative to the 2015-2019 trend line — and that the pandemic led to a net increase in births for U.S.-born mothers of around 46,000 children.
"They also discovered that a widely publicized drop in fertility rates in 2020 — agonized over in the press — was largely due to a sharp decline in births to foreign-born women, who were blocked from entering the country."
In addition, Axios writes, "The researchers looked at birth data from California in 2022 and found that the uptick there has continued — suggesting the pandemic changed the trajectory of fertility in the U.S. longer-term.
"The pandemic baby dividend might keep paying," says Hannes Schwandt, a professor at Northwestern University, who analyzed the CDC figures.
That's Eye-Opening good news for retailers - especially food retailers - because an increase in US birth rates means that those folks are going to have to eat.
That means more sales.
