The increasing rate of infertility among young Nigerians is a major concern to health experts, who revealed that thousands of Nigerian couples are childless.
Experts have predicted that psychological fallout of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) could cause birth rates to drop, people to stay single for longer and women to sexualise themselves more.
U.S. researchers reviewed 90 studies to help them predict how the pandemic could shift social behaviours and gender norms — even among those not infected.
They expect planned pregnancies to decrease in response to the global health crisis as people defer marriage and kids, leading some nations’ populations to shrink.
Drops in birth rates will have cascading impacts on society and economics, affecting such things as job opportunities and support for elderly populations.
The unequal division of the extra household labour brought by lockdown could see gender inequality rise and foster more social conservatism.
In many ways, the researchers noted, “the pandemic has become a worldwide social experiment” — the results of which have yet to finish playing out.
The researchers applied their varied expertise in predicting the future — which included backgrounds in behavioural science, economics, evolutionary biology, medicine and neuroscience.
The full findings of the study were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.