The economic uncertainties brought about by the COVID-19 health emergency have reinforced Filipino couples and individuals' preferences and behaviors on childbearing as they opted to delay or deprioritize having children, according to a study conducted by the Commission on Population Development (CPD).

CPD attributed this to their perceived lack of financial capacity and insufficient income.

According to CPD, these were further influenced by resultant hikes in prices of goods and services.

Focus group discussions and key informant interviews in the study dubbed "Fertility Decline during COVID-19 Pandemic," revealed that many couples' decision not to have children during the global health crisis also "increased the acceptability of modern family planning (FP) methods."

"But even prior to the contagion, the Philippine Statistics Authority’s 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 in a statement.

The trend was observed as early as 2017 and 2018, when there was a decline in total registered live births from 1,700,618 to 1,668,120, then in 2019 at 1,673,923.

The drop 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.

CPD Executive Director Lisa Grace S. Bersales, Ph.D. said their recent study supports the claim that even before the COVID-19 pandemic, "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 socioeconomic conditions, and the rise in the level of uncertainties in various aspects of the pandemic," Bersales said.

"We are now monitoring whether these fertility behaviors have become the norm post-pandemic," she added.

Contraceptive use

Bersales pointed out that the "prevalence of contraceptive use has risen" from 40 percent in 2017 to 42 percent in 2022.

CPD noted that Filipinos have increased their dependency on family planning (FP) methods, of which the pandemic was deemed as a key catalyst for the hike in usage.

The study also revealed that female-centric methods such as pills, ligation or female sterilization, and injectables are still the most preferred methods and that "women still carry out decisions with regard to FP as compared to men."

Meanwhile, the population and development (POPDEV) undersecretary likewise explained that in those years, the number of "Filipino women who want no more children, and those wanting to have a child soon" decreased from 52.6 percent to 48.8 percent and from 15.1 percent to 13.9 percent, respectively."

"One positive result that came out from the pandemic was the more conscious consideration of couples’ and families’ socioeconomic capacities, as well as preparedness in their childbearing decisions," the head of CPD pointed out.