Hard Hit: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on childbearing in the Hispanic/Latino population.

Publication date: Sep 01, 2025

The alarmingly disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on the working age segment of the Hispanic/Latino population motivates our focus on determining whether the COVID-19 pandemic differentially impacted the fertility of Hispanic women compared to non-Hispanic White women. Leveraging state-level birth count data, we perform an interrupted time-series (ITS) analysis using state-specific, piece-wise regression models to assess pandemic impacts on fertility across five different pre- and post-pandemic periods for U. S.-born Hispanic women, immigrant Hispanic women, and non-Hispanic white women. We present difference-in-differences (DiD) estimates to assess the impact of the pandemic on births to each group of women and difference-in-difference-in-differences (DDD) estimates to determine if U. S.-born or immigrant Hispanic women experienced more pronounced pandemic fertility impacts compared to their non-Hispanic White counterparts. There was substantial variability in both pre- and post-pandemic fertility trends by state and population sub-group. We find that immigrant Hispanic women in nearly all states had fewer births than expected from March 2020 through February 2021, irrespective of pre-pandemic fertility trends. In contrast, non-Hispanic white women in most states experienced a “baby boomlet” from December 2020 through December 2022. U. S.-born Hispanic women have a more variable pattern during this period, with fewer births than expected in about half of the states, and a “baby boomlet” in the other half. Relative to non-Hispanic whites, however, both groups of Hispanic women experienced more pronounced depressive pandemic impacts on fertility at the height of the pandemic (December 2020-February 2021). Mirroring disproportionate impacts on mortality, in the case of fertility, in nearly all states, foreign-born Hispanic Americans experienced pronounced and disproportionately negative impacts on births from December 2020 through February 2021, followed by a baby boomlet through December 2022. Establishing these patterns is a critical piece of a full accounting of the extent of the pandemic’s influence on our country’s demography, particularly how it has altered the population processes of such hard-hit sub-populations as Hispanic Americans.

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