MANILA – The Commission on Population and Development (PopCom) anticipated an increase in birth rate when the Covid-19 pandemic began because more families stayed at home and access to family planning methods was limited.
Instead, there was a substantial reduction in the number of births in 2020, with only 1,516,042 million registered – the lowest number since 1986, when 1,493,995 births were recorded.
According to a preliminary report from the Philippine Statistics Authority as of June 2021, the figure is also lower than the 1.675 million recorded in 2019.
In addition, the country had the lowest number of marriages in the past 20 years in 2020, with 240,183 couples marrying last year, or 44 percent fewer than the 431,972 who married in 2019.
The birth rate reduction, according to Undersecretary for Population and Development Juan Antonio Perez III, is due to a combination of factors including fewer marriages, women deferring pregnancies during the pandemic, and an increase in women adopting modern family planning methods.
“What we feared at the onset of the pandemic did not happen,” Perez said in a news release on Sunday. “From the PSA numbers, it is clear Filipino women are deciding to delay having children, and families are deferring, or avoiding, to have more kids, as they were made well-aware of the possible hardships and inconveniences in securing medical, as well as family planning services, since the pandemic has severely impeded health care systems.”
Despite travel limitations and limited local health-care capacities, Perez is satisfied with the success of family planning services in 2020, with 400,000 new users nationally, increasing the total to more than 8 million protected Filipino men, women, and couples.
The national government’s concerted efforts in support of local government family planning programs, allied agencies, and stakeholders from the public and private sectors increased Filipinos’ awareness and interest in the possible hazards of conceiving and giving birth during the health crisis.
PopCom’s National Program on Population and Family Planning, which began in 2019, has also pushed to boost community-based family planning services.
Concerns, projections
Perez cited the November 2020 survey of Social Weather Stations, which revealed that unwanted or unexpected pregnancies were among the top concerns for the majority of Filipino women as the pandemic progressed.
According to the report, they were also concerned about the implications of Covid-19 on their well-being, as well as the well-being of their families, unborn children, and the overall situation of the country.
Perez said the declining trend in weddings, pregnancies, and births will likely continue this year.
“The number of those who gave birth between January and March 2021 were at 268,000, compared with the normal trend of 350,000. If that continues, we can see an even smaller addition to the population by year-end,” he said.
He also stated that there may be delays in birth registration, particularly in the provinces, because midwives may have had difficulty reporting them due to the pandemic.
Fertility decline
The fertility rate in the country is now at 2.5 births per woman, from a high of 6 in the 1960s.
Perez thinks that after the pandemic, the situation would normalize, with fertility and the gradually declining number of marriages seeing a possible resurgence, similar to what happened after World War II.
“Filipinos will eventually learn to live with Covid-19. As such, we may see increased births after the era of Covid, with family planning helping couples avoid unplanned pregnancies, unlike in the late 1940s and 1950s when there was no family planning program,” he said.
Concerning the decline in marriages, Perez believed Filipinos have become more “informal” in their relationships.
In 2003, 593,553 couples married.
“As such, PopCom will devote a significant amount of its energies on young people who are now living together, and are having difficulty in acquiring family planning services, under its recent mandate to address the root causes of teen pregnancy,” he said.
According to Perez, family planning is just as important in a health crisis as it is in dealing with the aftermath of a pandemic.
“Alleviating poverty and the ability to plan one’s life should go together,” Perez said.
