Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service, with a program that tracks

down suspicious claims and questionable predictions and puts them to the test.

And I'm Tim Haafard.

If you heard our numbers of the year program recently, you may recall the economist

Marina Adshade describing a sharp decline in fertility rates in the United States.

Ten years ago, the US had really high teen birth rates, especially compared to other

developed countries. And that's something that's really changed over time, is it teenagers

are far less likely to be giving birth now than they were 10 years ago.

Well, she's back, with a picture from around the world.

Under lockdown, couples were destined to find themselves closer than ever before.

Many pundits predicted this enforced intimacy was short to instigate a baby making boom.

But Marina Adshade, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia, told

us otherwise, back in the early weeks of the pandemic.

And much as I hate to report that romance may be more dead than alive in these matters,

Adshade was right to be skeptical.

I thought this was actually pretty easy when to call that people would have fewer children.

I think that the idea that the reason people weren't having children is because they

apparently didn't have time to get busy, I don't think that was the cause.

I think there's a lot of economic decision making that goes into deciding how many children

you have, and in times of uncertainty, people don't have more children because they want

to know that they could be able to support those children.

Ah, so romance might be alive after all.

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