Social Inequalities and Fertility in Pandemic Times: The Impact of COVID‐19 on the Fertility of the Roma Population in Türkiye

ABSTRACT Vulnerable ethnic groups have been affected disproportionately by the COVID‐19 pandemic, and related fertility effects have been heterogeneous among different social groups. Although Türkiye hosts the largest Roma population, neither their fertility nor the pandemic's effects on it have been addressed. The novel contribution of this study is to analyse the fertility response to the COVID‐19 pandemic among the Roma in Türkiye and how it differed by socioeconomic status, further comparing the group with their counterparts in Europe. We frame our approach based on preceding theoretical and empirical literature on minority‐majority fertility differentials, and on studies of COVID‐19 and its heterogeneous fertility outcomes. Data is taken from “The Demographic Integration and Differentials of Roma Population and Policy Priorities in Türkiye” research. In addition to descriptive analyses, an event history approach is used wherein discrete‐time logit models are estimated using logistic regression, with a dependent variable of conception leading to a live birth. Our multivariate analyses show that for the Roma in Türkiye, COVID‐19 is associated with a statistically significant declined odds of conception in the second and following years of the pandemic compared to pre‐pandemic years, particularly for the first order of conception. The odds of third and higher‐orders of conceptions also decline in the post‐acute pandemic years. Interaction analyses indicate that Roma women of different wealth status and educational levels responded differently to the COVID‐19 pandemic in terms of both periodicity and sign of the relationship.