US birth rates just plummeted to their lowest since the baby boom era

• The US birth rate decreased 4.4% in one year, per data CBS cited from December 2020.
• Experts say the dwindling births indicate we're struggling financially, physically, and mentally.
• Pregnant people still fear hospitals and families are too tight on money to have babies.

Despite a year where most people stayed cooped up at home due to the coronavirus pandemic, a much-anticipated baby boom never happened.

According to data from 28 state health departments compiled by CBS News, the US birth rate declined 4.4% between December 2019 and December 2020 - the equivalent to 95,000 fewer births.

Birth rates have been on a steady decline in recent years, but the latest numbers are a stark comparison to March 2020 predictions that extra time spent at home would result in more baby-making.

"There's so much video calling going on that the babies conceived during the coronavirus pandemic should be called 'Baby Zoomers,'" one Twitter user mused at the time.

The opposite has occurred. Experts say it's likely due to pandemic-related financial, physical health, and mental health stressors.

As a result, experts say, the US and much of the world could experience a demographic time bomb, where babies aren't being born at a high enough rate to replace the existing population. It's a trend that public health experts have worried about for years because it could impact countries' economies, resource distribution, and workforce potential.

'The birthrate is a barometer of despair'

The lack of pandemic babies offers insight into the state of the world right now.

"The birthrate is a barometer of despair," Dowell Myers, a demographer at the University of Southern California, told NPR in 2019. "Not a whole lot of things are going good and that's haunting young people in particular, more than old people."

For the average person, the pandemic has exacerbated existing problems with financial stress, fears of falling ill to a deadly virus, and mental health issues like anxiety and depression.

Record-breaking rates of unemployment due to the pandemic are only solidifying feelings of financial insecurity for those who might otherwise want children. (Even the ability to hold off on having a child is a privilege: those who have limited or no access to birth control or abortion are often forced into these positions even if they can't afford or want them.)

In a survey of more than 1,000 women from personal finance company SoFi and reproductive health company Modern Fertility, one-third said the pandemic influenced their family-planning decisions. 61% said they were more anxious about their ability to support children at this time, with 41% specifically citing financial reasons.

According to the USDA, its costs an average of $233,610 to raise one child, and that doesn't include the cost of higher education from a university, which is an extra $20,000 to $40,000 on average.

Pregnant people still fear COVID-19 in hospitals

Others are concerned about the health risks of a pregnancy during the pandemic.

27% of respondents from the SoFi survey said they're delaying their pregnancies because they're worried they'll get COVID-19, and 22% are worried their partner will get the disease. Meanwhile, nearly half of respondents said they're worried about access to prenatal care due to the coronavirus.

Haley Neidich, a 35-year-old therapist from Florida, told Insider that she put her pregnancy plans on hold due to her previous complicated pregnancy and need for careful and regular monitoring at doctor's offices. Neidich experienced a miscarriage in January while trying to conceive a second child. They decided they'd start trying again in March, but the pandemic curtailed that plan.

She also said the prospect of caring for her two-year-old daughter while carrying a high-risk pregnancy would be too much to handle right now, especially without the help of nearby family and friends she'd normally lean on.

Experts are unsure if sharp decline in births is a trend that's pandemic-specific, or one that will continue even when the global health crisis ends.

"We don't know if it's the beginning of a bigger decline over the whole next year or if it's just a shock from March," Phil Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland, told CBS News. "But I'm more inclined based on history to think that all of next year is going to be very much down for births."