Birth and pregnancy numbers decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan: A time series analysis with the ARIMA model.

ABSTRACT:

Aim

The long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on birth and pregnancy trends in Japan remain unclear. Although major sporting events are usually followed by an increase in births 9 months later, Japan's fifth wave of COVID-19 occurred during the Olympics held in Japan during the summer of 2021. In this study, we analyzed how the number of births and pregnancies changed during the COVID-19 pandemic and large-scale events in Japan.

Methods

We utilized monthly vital statistical data from birth certificates spanning the years 2010 to 2022. Our analysis followed the identification, estimation, and forecasting stages of autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) modeling. We found the ARIMA (1, 12, 12) model to be adequate for forecasting the monthly number of births.

SUBMITTER: Yamamoto K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11750332 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature