The Commission on Population and Development (CPD) made this observation after receiving the report of the qualitative study it commissioned recently.

“Economic uncertainties brought about by the COVID-19 health emergency have reinforced Filipino couples and individuals’ preferences and behavior son childbearing, as they opted to delay or deprioritize having children due to their perceived lack of financial capacity and insufficient income,” a CPD statement said.

The agency added:”These were further influenced by resultant hikes in prices of goods and services.”

The study “Fertility Decline during COVID-19 Pandemic” indicated that many Filipino couples who have decided against having children during the worldwide health crisis have resorted to modern family health methods to achieve their goal.

“But even before COVID the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) Civil Registration and Vital Statistics or CRVS has disclosed that the majority of the country’s regions were already displaying a downturn in the total number of registered births in 2019,” the CPD said.

The decline was noted das early as 2017 and 2018 when the total registered live births dipped from 1,700,618 to 1,668,120. A year later in 2019, the registered births totaled 1,673,923.

“The droop was more pronounced in 2020 as only 1,528,684 babies were born. The figure dipped further in 2021 to 1,364,739 but rebounded in 2022 at 1,455,393,” said the commission.

CPD Executive Director Lisa Grace S. Bersales noted that the study is in consonance with the claim that even before the COVID 19 pandemic Filipinos were already “keen with their mindsets of delaying life-defining events such as dating, marriages and having children.

“These preferences were reinforced by the shocks in broader socio-economic conditions and the rise in the level of uncertainties in various aspects of the pandemic,” she said.

Bersales added: “We are now monitoring whether these fertility behaviors have become the norm post-pandemic.”