Dynamic Family Size Preferences during the COVID-19 Mortality Crisis

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Interdisciplinary Centers, Units and Projects::Penn Population Studies Centers::Population Center Working Papers (PSC/PARC)
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Immunology and Infectious Disease
Mental and Social Health
Public Health
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Subject
fertility preferences
desired family size (DFS)
COVID-19
mortality shocks
Latin America
Funder
This research was funded by grant R01HD091257, Reproductive Responses to the Zika Virus Epidemic in Brazil, awarded to PI L. J. Marteleto by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. This research was also supported by grant P2CHD042849, Population Research Center, awarded to the PRC at The University of Texas at Austin by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. This study was conducted under Institutional Review Board approval #2018-01-0055 from the University of Texas at Austin and is now under Institutional Review Board approval #853752 at the University of Pennsylvania upon the PI’s institutional change; as well as the Brazilian National Commission for Research Ethics (also known as CONEP, or Comissão Nacional de Ética em Pesquisa) study approval CAAE: 34032920.1.0000.5149.
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2025-03-21
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Marteleto, Letícia J.
Kumar, Sneha
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Abstract

In this note, we examine how family size preferences evolved for women with and without children in response to changing COVID-19 mortality exposure during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. We leverage spatiotemporal variation in COVID-19 deaths occurring during panel surveys in 2020 and 2021 with a population-based sample of 2,520 women, ages 18–34, across 94 municipalities in Pernambuco, Brazil. We use individual fixed-effects regressions to examine whether changes in municipality-level COVID-19 death rates are associated with changes in women’s desired family size, net of own/family COVID-19 infection status and other time-varying sociodemographic factors. We find that women with and without children at baseline respond differently to changing municipality-level COVID-19 deaths—while women without children do not change their desired family size, women with children see a small but significant increase in their desired family size in response to rising COVID-19 mortality. These innovative findings suggest that women with children responded to widespread COVID-19-related loss within their communities by wanting to build and consolidate their families. We advance knowledge about varying contextual influences on fertility preferences during epidemics in a middle-income country with young and below-replacement fertility.

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Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC) 2025-118
Publication date
2025-03-21
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