It is tempting to write the headline "candles replace babies," but the truth is slower and sadder and involves a pandemic. Both numbers, in 2020, moved — one up, one down — as Americans rearranged what they wanted their houses to contain. The wax was, for a while, easier.
Candle sales jumped in 2020 as locked-down households embraced cozy-at-home comfort, while the US fertility rate dropped to a historic low as covid's economic uncertainty, unemployment, and general gloom convinced would-be parents to wait. The two lines are inversely related only if you squint; they are really two facets of the same retreat into private, pandemic-limited domesticity.
So the correlation is the small arithmetic of a frightened year: more candles lit, fewer babies born. Neither is a policy; both are feelings, measured. Something was lit; something else wasn't.
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Want to learn more about why correlations like “US fertility rate” vs “US candle market retail sales” don't prove causation? Read our guide to statistical thinking.
