Partisan Divergence in Fertility Change Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Florida

Motivated by political-based differences in pandemic perceptions, this study analyzed whether Republican- and Democratic-leaning counties exhibited differential fertility shifts, leading to a partisan fertility gap. As COVID-19 emerged, the political right dismissed the threat of the virus, while the political left emphasized it as a major crisis. These contrasting views may have led to diverging fertility responses between those living in Democratic- and Republican-leaning areas. Using county-level data from Florida, difference-in-difference models predicted quarterly change in fertility rates between 2018 and 2022. Models estimated the partisan fertility gap (e.g., Republican-Democratic difference in fertility rate changes relative to before the pandemic) as a function of 2020 Trump vote share. The partisan fertility gap widened during the pandemic’s early months, as fertility in Republican-leaning counties declined less than in Democratic-leaning counties. This gap was only observed for White women and was robust to controlling on time-varying potential confounders (unemployment rate and racial composition changes). The partisan gap was short-lived, however. Results suggest that politically-charged contexts where would-be-parents lived may have affected pandemic-induced fertility shocks and demonstrates the need to understand fertility changes in the context of the broader political environment—a vital endeavor given record-low fertility and unprecedented political polarization in the United States.

Duke Scholars

Author Christina M. Gibson-Davis Sanford School of Public Policy