The paper interestingly finds that fertility rates have fallen to historically low levels in virtually all high-income countries due to a fundamental reordering of adult priorities rather than economic factors.
Middle income countries like China have low fertility.
Lower-middle income countries like India are around replacement level (I think officially it's lower than replacement but lot of births are "unofficial").
West African fertility rates are high... but A LOT lower than they were 50 years ago, and still trending downwards.
Part of the reason is probably that nearly all high income countries have terrible housing policies that make it impossible for ordinary people to have stable housing until their late 30s/early 40s.
Fascinating topic. I personally suspect that it has more to do with attitude and life style priorities rather than economics. But I remember reading a very recent article in the Economist that argued that birth rates declined mostly in low income families, which would contradict that.
> Underpinning these policies is an assumption that poorer women are more likely to respond to incentives to have more children. Indeed, their fertility rates do seem more elastic than those of professional women. Whereas the fertility rates of older, college-educated women have remained fairly steady over the past six decades, most of the collapse in fertility in America and Britain since 1980 stems from younger and poorer women having fewer children, particularly from unplanned pregnancies.
I think the problem is that many of these countries have a cultural idea of economic milestones you're supposed to reach in life (moving out, getting a real job, becoming stable, getting married etc) before having kids and the mass migration from countries with different ideas of how economics work have made these unreachable.
Its not just high income countries. Fertility rates are similar in a huge range range of other diverse countries (Colombia, Cuba, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Turkey, Iran, etc.).
In a developed country the cost in terms of time, effort and money for a child is much higher. The modern world is simply incompatible for large families. Having more than 2 children means driving a giant car and it means a crazy amount of time and planning around after school activities in addition to needing to be up to date with their school activities.
I have 2 and I already spend most afternoons driving/picking them up from sports, If I had 3 it would literally be every day including weekends.
I’ve seen somewhere an uncomfortable chart which shows that fertility rate is almost perfectly inversely correlated with a single number: average years of women education. Also what’s interesting, allegedly, reducing the average woman education seems to be the only reliable way of growing diminished TFR. Please don’t kill the messenger, I’d love to be shown it’s false.
Couldn’t find any details about this on a quick skim of this paper on my phone.
Also, I think, to many people it’s becoming obvious that increasing birth rates cannot be achieved with measures that make people feel good, unfortunately. It will likely be a tough choice between bad and worse.
This is true, but fiercely denied due to the unpleasant implications. The UN itself used to officially advise that the best way to lower TFRs, out of fear of overpopulation, was through increasing the education of young women.
The high income countries can continue to attract an endless supply of pre-manufactured labour resources from lower income countries, so are not manufacturing it at home.
One is opportunity cost: You simply have more options (especially women), so having children now comes at the cost of many other potential paths whereas it used to be the default.
Housing costs: Most people want to live in a few cities per country and every desirable city I've ever heard of has an affordable housing crisis. When you can barely afford enough space for yourself, how are you going to have a room for a baby, let alone multiple.
> One is opportunity cost: You simply have more options (especially women), so having children now comes at the cost of many other potential paths whereas it used to be the default.
Exactly. Traditionally, the man was supposed to be the breadwinner, women weren't expected to have a career, and what would she do all day at home after getting married? Of course she would get a lot of kids.
> Housing costs: Most people want to live in a few cities per country and every desirable city I've ever heard of has an affordable housing crisis. When you can barely afford enough space for yourself, how are you going to have a room for a baby, let alone multiple.
Not sure how strong this effect really is. I'm not aware available housing space having decreased over time.
Whatever the reasons are, decent countries should not fall for the temptation to launch embarrassing campaigns to rise the fertility rate. That is what totalitarian countries do. And all these campaigns seem to fail anyway. Sure, low fertility rates (if they prevails) will cause disturbances on society, but then societies must adapt.
In high income countries, you have to provide your child with higher education to have a competitive income. Because education is expensive, having more children makes it impossible to give them a good education. On top of that higher education occurs during the period that humans are the most fit. Fitness and fertility rates drop quickly after the age of 30.
I think it's mainly about our modern gender roles and expectations, where both partners tend to work and earn a similar amount. With traditional gender norms, the husband was expected to be the main breadwinner, while the wife wouldn't earn much. So her subjective opportunity cost of quitting her job, staying at home and having children was quite low.
Not saying that one is better than the other, just that this seems the most plausible explanation I've heard so far.
Poor people used to have kids as a free work force and free elder support too. Pure selfishness. Today in Spain you are required to take care of your elder parents by law. Oh, back in the day often a third of the children died before reaching age 3 under very recently relatively speaking.
So, that's it. Conservatives love to bitch out about family duties, because once you are a slave of your elder relatives ON TOP of your children caring, you will never succeed against rich people.
Dear Brits and Germans, think twice before settling down a family there because of an easy retirement.
Housing costs, cost of education for yourself and kids, needing to work and study longer to provide more. More women want careers longer.
Basically we compete more until everything costs more. Now we need multiple salaries because everyone we’re competing against is a highly paid couple. Rinse and repeat so everything of value is too expensive for “average people”.
I think at this point the better question is: why in the past fertility was so high? and I think the reasons were mainly that people _relied_ on their children to grow up and take over the farm and take care of their parents. They were also mortally bored and children are fun. They had them for selfish reasons.
But nowadays? why would you have a child? for a middle class+ family in a developed country, having a child is a 6 figures expense over their lifetime, limits your career, holidays, etc. From a selfish point of view, it doesn't make a lot of sense.
I don't think it's the only explanation but children are, individually, optional so you can, for selfish reasons, do it or not.
TIL - fertility is used interchangably with birth rate in demographic studies. What I think of as fertility - the ability to have offspring, in a purely biological sense - is apparently termed 'fecundity'.
This is only mentioned briefly in the 'infertility' subsection, and then only attributed to age, with mention of IVF as a mitigating factor.
However, there is evidence that, due to a variety of factors, there is a steady but persistent decline in sperm count globally, and that this had a sizable impact on birth rates/fertility.
TLDR: It's complicated, but the science seems to be decidedly up in the air. We don't actually know if sperm counts are declining, let alone the cause.
Social media is the largest single factor in collapsing birthrates. Social media made widely accessible depictions of lifestyles that glorify wealth, travel, living carefree lives. This increased the baseline expectations people have of their own lives. Children are just an impediment to that lifestyle. Social media also massively raises the expectation of the costs of raising kids. It's no longer enough to keep them fed and clothed. A child's existence must be maxxed in terms of attention, simulation, enrichment, etc. Anything less is deemed borderline abusive.
1. Fewer people ever have kids. In every rich country the share of women who remain childless at age 45 is climbing, and it is rising at all intermediate ages as well. This is not just postponement.
2. Total family size is shrinking. Even among parents, second- and third-birth rates are trending down, so completed fertility is falling toward or below 1.5 children per woman in most of the OECD.
3. Short-run economics don’t add up. Recessions, housing booms, or pandemic shocks temporarily nudge annual births, but they neither align in timing nor in magnitude with the long-run fall.
4. Money helps, but only a little. Large cash allowances or cheap housing can raise births, yet estimates show gains of only a few hundredths of a child per woman—far from the 0.5–0.7 needed to reach replacement fertility.
5. Attitudes have flipped. Surveys across Europe, North America, and East Asia reveal a marked decline in the share of young adults who view marriage and children as central life goals; career, leisure, and personal autonomy score higher.
TL:DR; it’s culture. People don’t want kids anymore. It is not housing costs, lack of support, etc…
It takes about 10 minutes of middle school math to think through the rather catastrophic consequences and their second and third order effects. The consequences will literally be worse for civilization than the worst IPCC projections of climate change, and arrive much sooner! I'm honestly shocked we talk about anything else.
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[ 0.29 ms ] story [ 88.7 ms ] threadhttps://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/e1jrvw/oc_...
Middle income countries like China have low fertility.
Lower-middle income countries like India are around replacement level (I think officially it's lower than replacement but lot of births are "unofficial").
West African fertility rates are high... but A LOT lower than they were 50 years ago, and still trending downwards.
Whatever the reason, it's happening everywhere.
> Underpinning these policies is an assumption that poorer women are more likely to respond to incentives to have more children. Indeed, their fertility rates do seem more elastic than those of professional women. Whereas the fertility rates of older, college-educated women have remained fairly steady over the past six decades, most of the collapse in fertility in America and Britain since 1980 stems from younger and poorer women having fewer children, particularly from unplanned pregnancies.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/06/19/why-magas-pro-n...
Just like with many of these topics, most sources seem to contradict each other.
I have 2 and I already spend most afternoons driving/picking them up from sports, If I had 3 it would literally be every day including weekends.
Couldn’t find any details about this on a quick skim of this paper on my phone.
Also, I think, to many people it’s becoming obvious that increasing birth rates cannot be achieved with measures that make people feel good, unfortunately. It will likely be a tough choice between bad and worse.
One is opportunity cost: You simply have more options (especially women), so having children now comes at the cost of many other potential paths whereas it used to be the default.
Housing costs: Most people want to live in a few cities per country and every desirable city I've ever heard of has an affordable housing crisis. When you can barely afford enough space for yourself, how are you going to have a room for a baby, let alone multiple.
Exactly. Traditionally, the man was supposed to be the breadwinner, women weren't expected to have a career, and what would she do all day at home after getting married? Of course she would get a lot of kids.
> Housing costs: Most people want to live in a few cities per country and every desirable city I've ever heard of has an affordable housing crisis. When you can barely afford enough space for yourself, how are you going to have a room for a baby, let alone multiple.
Not sure how strong this effect really is. I'm not aware available housing space having decreased over time.
Not saying that one is better than the other, just that this seems the most plausible explanation I've heard so far.
So, that's it. Conservatives love to bitch out about family duties, because once you are a slave of your elder relatives ON TOP of your children caring, you will never succeed against rich people.
Dear Brits and Germans, think twice before settling down a family there because of an easy retirement.
Basically we compete more until everything costs more. Now we need multiple salaries because everyone we’re competing against is a highly paid couple. Rinse and repeat so everything of value is too expensive for “average people”.
But nowadays? why would you have a child? for a middle class+ family in a developed country, having a child is a 6 figures expense over their lifetime, limits your career, holidays, etc. From a selfish point of view, it doesn't make a lot of sense.
I don't think it's the only explanation but children are, individually, optional so you can, for selfish reasons, do it or not.
1. No birth control
2. Harder to find scary stories of parents being unhappy without the internet
3. Much less entertainment. Sex and kids are substitutes for other forms of entertainment.
4. Kids are a much larger commitment than they used to be. Having 5+ kids is basically unheard of in my area.
I agree with the paper, declining birth rates is much more about shifting priorities than any economic factors.
i think there were waaaay more scare stories.....
This is only mentioned briefly in the 'infertility' subsection, and then only attributed to age, with mention of IVF as a mitigating factor.
However, there is evidence that, due to a variety of factors, there is a steady but persistent decline in sperm count globally, and that this had a sizable impact on birth rates/fertility.
https://rbej.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12958-023-0... "Infertility affects one in every six couples in developed countries, and approximately 50% is of male origin."
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/declining-sperm-count-much-...
TLDR: It's complicated, but the science seems to be decidedly up in the air. We don't actually know if sperm counts are declining, let alone the cause.
But, despite advances in fertility science, it can be truly challenging to have kids in your 40s.
1. Fewer people ever have kids. In every rich country the share of women who remain childless at age 45 is climbing, and it is rising at all intermediate ages as well. This is not just postponement.
2. Total family size is shrinking. Even among parents, second- and third-birth rates are trending down, so completed fertility is falling toward or below 1.5 children per woman in most of the OECD.
3. Short-run economics don’t add up. Recessions, housing booms, or pandemic shocks temporarily nudge annual births, but they neither align in timing nor in magnitude with the long-run fall.
4. Money helps, but only a little. Large cash allowances or cheap housing can raise births, yet estimates show gains of only a few hundredths of a child per woman—far from the 0.5–0.7 needed to reach replacement fertility.
5. Attitudes have flipped. Surveys across Europe, North America, and East Asia reveal a marked decline in the share of young adults who view marriage and children as central life goals; career, leisure, and personal autonomy score higher.
TL:DR; it’s culture. People don’t want kids anymore. It is not housing costs, lack of support, etc…