This paper examines the recent declines in period fertility in the constituent countries of the UK during the past decade and speculates mechanisms through which the COVID-19 pandemic could influence childbearing in the UK. The effects are likely to differ by age and presence of children. Considering potential forces acting on individuals at different ages and family sizes, we expect that the COVID-19 pandemic will depress fertility, particularly among younger people. Because fertility at all ages was declining before the onset of the pandemic, this could mean a further decline in period fertility to historically low UK levels. We put forward a number of scenarios to examine the possible impact of the pandemic on numbers of live births. Our projections show that for three scenarios out of four, fertility is expected to decline over the next 3 years, leading to significantly fewer births annually compared with the pre-pandemic period.

中文翻译：

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包含 COVID-19 影响的基于情景的生育率预测

本文研究了在过去十年中英国组成国家近期生育率的下降，并推测了 COVID-19 大流行可能影响英国生育的机制。影响可能因年龄和是否有儿童而异。考虑到作用于不同年龄和家庭规模的个人的潜在力量，我们预计 COVID-19 大流行将抑制生育能力，尤其是在年轻人中。由于在大流行开始之前所有年龄段的生育率都在下降，这可能意味着生育率进一步下降至英国历史最低水平。我们提出了一些情景来检验大流行对活产婴儿数量的可能影响。我们的预测显示，对于四分之三的情景，