A fecundidade nas macrorregiões do Brasil no cenário da pandemia do Covid-19 e da crise econômica

Abstract

The double crisis, health and economic, that Brazil is currently experiencing affects women three times over, whether in the double or triple workday, in the health field or due to domestic violence (UN, 2020), she suffers imminent risk to her health and that of her children, her reproductive right, her financial support and her life. In this scenario, she enters a dilemma, assessing whether the time is right to conceive and raise children. Meanwhile, the Brazilian fertility rate, already below replacement levels, is decreasing more and more, implying, in the medium and long terms, the various economic sectors. That said, the general objective was to examine fertility among Brazilian women, at the national and macro-regional levels by age of mother, considering the scenario of the Covid-19 pandemic and the economic crisis that began in 2014, envisioning the possible consequences for demographic dynamics, for generational relations, and for the economy. From there, it was extracted as specific objectives: (a) estimate the number of births by female reproductive age group, for Brazil and macro-regions in 2020 and 2021; (b) detect the birth trend in Brazil and its macro-regions between 2010 and 2021; (c) analyze the fertility trend in Brazil and its macro-regions between 2017 and 2021; and (d) investigate the possible motivations for the birth and fertility trends found. The base data come from SINASC and the population projections made by IBGE, 2018 revision. Both, obtained by maternal reproductive age group at the national and macro-regional levels. The selected periods were, respectively, 2010 to 2019 and 2010 to 2021. The methodology adopted to calculate the 2020 and 2021 estimates was based on relative growth rates. With these estimates, we calculated the FTEs (2010 to 2021) and the TFRs (2017 to 2021). To improve the analysis, the number of live births was grouped into three maternal age groups: Young, Intermediate, and Mature. As main results, we highlight that, in general, women aged 15 to 24 years tend to conceive less and less, while women aged 35 to 39 years and 45 to 49 years predispose to conceive "more". As for macro-regional differences, the North was the only region studied that showed no growth in births among women aged 40 to 44, and the Southeast was the only region with a declining trend among women aged 30 to 34. Furthermore, it was seen that the Southeast and Northeast regions tended to reduce births among women between the ages of 25 and 29. The findings induce that the trend of fewer children for the next five years will compromise the economy, generational relations and family patterns, among others. In this situation, the present study intends to launch elements to project and discuss actions and directions for the reestablishment of the birth rate, and thus fertility, by means of facilitating and enabling policies for the exercise of reproductive rights, especially among women of greater reproductive power.