"Previous studies have shown that fertility rates dropped during the pandemic, but they didn’t really look at the differences across states. Adelman and her colleagues analyzed changes in fertility rates in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. during the pandemic’s first two waves. To do so, they used data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the 2020 U.S. Census and the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, which estimated state populations nine months after each COVID wave in 2021."