The Covid-19 pandemic has led to rises in morbidity and mortality, but its demographic consequences may not end there. Since the pandemic began, the public has experienced tremendous uncertainty and worry about SARS-CoV-2 infection, especially because scientific understanding of a novel disease takes time to develop and disseminate. During periods of extreme uncertainty and worry, people may revise their fertility intentions, drawing on their prior experiences during prior epidemics. To

more »

... ate this possibility, we examine whether women's social proximity to Zika during the Zika epidemic predict their fertility intentions during the Covid-19 pandemic. We apply Structural Equation Models on unique microdata from 3,998 Brazilian women in Brazil, the country most affected by Zika, to understand whether a novel infectious disease outbreak left lasting imprints that shape fertility intentions during a subsequent novel infectious disease outbreak, the Covid-19 pandemic, and whether these scarring effects operate differently by race. Results demonstrate a scarring effect such that a woman's social proximity to Zika directly predicts fertility intentions three years later, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, regardless of whether a woman herself had or suspected that she had Zika. Findings also show that Zika social proximity is associated with increased perceived risk of Covid-19 infection and worry about pregnancy and fetal complications from Covid-19. We also show that white and non-white women have scarred differently from the Zika epidemic. Broadly, our findings speak to the transformative consequences of novel infectious disease outbreaks that go beyond mortality and health.