Rapid, generalized falls in human fertility are an enormous and under-appreciated challenge for virtually the whole world outside of sub-Saharan Africa. The issue is often overlooked because population can continue to increase for decades even with below-replacement fertility, and immigration can mask population ageing and even decline. Falling fertility also appears to many an intractable problem because it is so widespread, happening now in both rich and poor countries, dense and sparsely populated ones, and across all kinds of political and religious cultures, as illustrated by a widely-read recent post on X (see below). 

Another obstacle to wider debate about declining fertility in Western countries at least, is that pro-natalism is perceived as right-coded, and specifically as a threat to female emancipation and equality. Thus, American academic and pro-natalist Bryan Caplan reported being called a Nazi and a eugenicist by protesters while attending a pro-natal conference in Austin, Texas in March.

But, while the effects of persistent low fertility take time to manifest themselves, the impacts are remorseless once they do; nor can they be fixed quickly. Therefore it is important that countries react early. Once a nation’s population is in actual decline half the battle has already been lost.

Second, while the field is certainly complex, there are a large number of practical options to try to arrest or reverse declining fertility open to governments, and therefore reasons to hope. Third, there is no intrinsic reason pro-natalism should be a right-wing issue. Rather, it is universal and demands engagement from governments of all political persuasions.

In this spirit, we explore the need and possibilities for governments to become more pro-natal without sacrificing the huge benefits brought by modernity.

A real and present problem

The sheer scale and speed of fertility declines are unprecedented and unexpected. To take just one small set of countries from around the world, in just the ten years to 2024 the number of births fell by 50% in China, 46% in Argentina and Chile, 45% in South Korea, 35% in Thailand and 9% even in the less affected USA (see chart).

Demographers had generally assumed that, after falling, fertility rates would settle around the replacement level of approximately 2.1 births per woman. However, the data show that almost no country that has fallen below replacement is managing a ‘soft landing’, in the words of demographer Paul Morland.

Instead, fertility in many countries is continuing a downward trend, as exemplified by a range of countries in Latin America where UN projections have proven consistently optimistic (see chart). This faster-than-expected drop leaves less time for societies to adapt to the ensuing demographic shifts.

Second, the lack of a discernible floor to the total fertility rate (TFR) in many countries is deeply concerning. In several countries, particularly in East Asia and Southern Europe, TFR has plummeted to exceptionally low levels, sometimes below 1.4 or even 1.0 births per woman. South Korea is an often cited example, with a TFR of only 0.75 in 2024.

But it is not alone. Early data from the current year put Greece’s TFR on course for 1.16 in 2025, down from 1.24 in 2024; China’s at 0.9, down from 1.1; and Thailand’s even lower at 0.86, down from 0.95. Across 35 countries for which figures are available all but four are showing lower numbers of births so far in 2025 than in the same months in 2024, according to BirthGuage, an account on X.

The fact that these rates show little sign of rebounding to replacement levels, with only a few countries experiencing even slight and temporary increases after reaching their lowest point, suggests a long-term trend of significantly below-replacement fertility for a vast majority of nations.

The negative consequences of sustained low fertility are wide-ranging and severe:

• Population Ageing: Persistently low birth rates lead to a rapidly ageing population, with a larger proportion of older individuals and a shrinking younger generation. This creates an imbalance in the age structure, leading to:
• Shrinking Labour Force: A sustained period of low fertility results in a smaller pool of young people entering the workforce. This can lead to labour shortages, hindering economic growth, reducing productivity, and potentially decreasing innovation due to a decline in human capital.
• Increasing Dependency Ratios: With fewer working-age individuals and more retirees, the dependency ratio—the ratio of non-productive to productive members of society—increases significantly. This places a growing financial burden on the smaller working population to support social security systems, pensions, and healthcare for the elderly, a situation exemplified by Italy (see chart).

• Economic Stagnation and Diminished Innovation: Some argue that falling birth rates could lead to economic stagnation and reduced innovation. A smaller, older population may be less dynamic and less inclined towards risk-taking and entrepreneurship.
• Absolute Population Decline: When fertility rates remain below replacement for an extended period, and are not offset by sufficient immigration, countries will experience an absolute decline in their population size. Countries like China, Russia, and Japan are already witnessing this.

It’s worth focusing further on how widespread and deep population decline could become. The Lancet estimates that, absent immigration, countries tend to start shrinking about 30 years after their TFR falls below replacement. Just under half of all countries are forecast to be in this position by 2050, rising to 87% by 2100.

In countries that sustain very low TFR rates, the scale of population decline will be extreme. The exact pattern is complicated by lots of factors, but put simply, a TFR of 1 means that population will halve in each generation. As a result, countries like Korea and China already face losing at least 50% of their people by around 2050, 75% by 2075, 88% by 2100 and 94% by 2125.

The complex causes of declining fertility

Declining fertility rates are a complex global issue driven by a multitude of interconnected factors, the impact of which also varies across different countries and contexts. This means that, beyond vague umbrella terms like “modernity”, there are no specific drivers that are universal. Nevertheless, some of the same factors are often associated with declining birth rates.

The cost of raising children is frequently cited by researchers, encompassing expenses such as housing, education, and childcare. Some hypothesize that rising financial burdens, including high student loan debt, have contributed to fertility decline. There is certainly a strong association with children living with parents into adulthood and lower fertility (see chart). However, while the cost of raising children is undoubtedly a consideration, its influence is complex and fertility is also low in some places where childcare is affordable and accessible.

Increasing participation of women in education and the labour force is an often-cited factor. As women gain more opportunities outside the home, they may delay childbearing or choose to have fewer children. This shift is linked to what has been termed the “incomplete gender revolution,” where women’s participation in the public sphere has increased significantly, but men’s involvement in the private sphere of home and family has lagged behind.

Economic conditions and uncertainty also influence fertility rates. The global financial crisis in 2008 marked a turning point, ending fertility rebounds in many low-fertility countries and initiating declines in others. Perceived economic uncertainty, job insecurity, and concerns about the economic future can negatively affect fertility decisions. However, the specific economic factors at play and their perceived impact can differ greatly between nations.

Later union formation and declining marriage rates are also significant factors, particularly in some regions like Southern Europe. Marriage remains strongly associated with fertility in many areas, with married women generally having more children. However, the relationship between marriage and fertility and the drivers behind changing marriage patterns are culturally specific.

Shifting societal values and priorities are increasingly recognized as drivers of lower fertility. Some researchers suggest a shift towards greater emphasis on personal autonomy and less on childrearing compared to past generations. Changing perspectives on parenting, where it is viewed as requiring more resources than in the past, may also contribute.

The fact that factors like expensive housing or childcare costs seem to lower fertility in some countries but not others underscores the importance of the ‘fertility stack’ concept. Fertility rates are not determined by a single factor but by the cumulative effect of numerous factors working in conjunction. A place with more factors favouring childbearing will likely have higher fertility. Addressing the birth rate crisis requires a comprehensive approach rather than focusing too narrowly on any single cause.

Searching for solutions: immigration

Across many Western countries that have had below replacement fertility for decades a key response has been to increase immigration of working age people. Germany, for example, already has nearly three deaths for every birth and would be shrinking but for immigration, which has grown hugely in recent years (see chart).

Even more strikingly, in England and Wales the ethnic category of “white British” is on track to be a minority of school children by about 2035 and of all births by 2030: this is wholesale demographic upheaval, not changes at the margins.

Immigration rates have surged across most Western countries, driven by a number of factors. Governments have accommodated this in part in order to grow national, if not per capita, GDP, maintain the size of workforces and slow increases in national dependency ratios, which risk becoming a fiscal crisis in time in a number of countries.

Several countries, including Australia, Canada, France, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States, are projected to have their populations grow beyond 2054 due to sustained high levels of immigration despite low fertility rates.

However, on a global scale immigration is not a universal solution, nor necessarily effective in the long-term even for countries that can attract migrants, and has ethical questions in a world in which many countries are at risk of shrinking while still poor.

First, large-scale immigration required to stave off long-term population decline, is only a realistic option for wealthier nations. Because fertility decline is generalized across the world – again with the exception of Sub-Saharan Africa – many relatively poor countries are already below replacement fertility and already feeling the ill-effects, and are on course to actually start shrinking this century (see chart).

This group includes populous nations like Thailand and Vietnam, which will struggle to attract immigrants on the scale needed in competition from Western countries able to pay far higher wages to attract the same talent.

A second issue is effectiveness, or lack of it. Even in countries with high immigration levels, such as the United States, the total fertility rate remains below replacement. While immigration can initially bolster the number of births by increasing the number of women of reproductive age, research suggests that even if migrant fertility remains higher, the effect on overall fertility is often limited due to their smaller share in the total population. Moreover, the fertility rates of immigrant women tend to converge with those of the host country.

Therefore, to continuously offset below-replacement fertility through immigration alone would necessitate increasingly large and sustained flows of migrants over generations. As the majority of countries are projected to have below-replacement fertility by 2100, the feasibility of such large-scale continuous migration globally becomes questionable.

Third, it is reasonable to pose ethical questions about a few fortunate countries continuously drawing in new cohorts of labour, even as much poorer countries face the prospect of population decline and economic sclerosis.

Taking the most ambitious and talented young people from poorer countries could reduce human capital when it is no longer being made at home in such large quantities. If these individuals are also of reproductive age, their emigration can contribute to a further decline in fertility in their home countries. There is a moral argument to be made that rich countries should address the risk that their immigration policies could increasingly lead to de-development in poorer countries with low fertility.

This is true even looking across developing countries. To return to the example of Thailand, it is relatively industrialized and prosperous compared with some neighbouring countries and already takes in large quantities of labour from Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos. One demographer has predicted that it will begin to attract immigration from India soon. Meanwhile Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos all face a real risk of being “hollowed out”.

Searching for solutions: family policies

Many governments facing declining fertility rates have introduced a range of family policies aimed at encouraging childbearing, though the political context for these is especially complex, with such policies often driven more by an ideological affinity with family per se, or by redistributive policies aimed at assisting the poor, or a mixture of all three. 

These policies often include financial incentives, such as tax exemptions or credits for families with children, direct cash transfers or “baby bonuses”, and ongoing child benefit payments or family allowances. Governments also implement paid maternity, paternity, and parental leave policies to support parents in balancing work and family life. Subsidies for childcare and early education facilities are another common measure to reduce the cost of raising children. Some countries also offer free or subsidized assisted reproductive technologies (IVF).

The general message from research into family policies is that their effectiveness in reversing fertility decline is questionable. Some research indicates that, while family policies do contribute to higher fertility, they may only have marginal or short-term effects. For instance, “baby bonus” payments often show a limited effect, primarily influencing the timing of childbearing rather than the total number of children families have.

A study on China’s birth policies showed that lifting birth restrictions and providing tax incentives resulted in short-term increases in births, but these effects were not sustained, and the birth rate once again declined. Similarly, research on Russia, Poland, and Hungary’s “flagship” pro-natal programmes found that they had limited impacts on fertility, with any increases being temporary.

Countries with more extensive public support for families tend to have higher fertility rates, and fertility often increases when family policies become more generous. However, there is evidence that monetary inducements need to be large to have a significant effect, meaning they must be expensive for national exchequers. Additionally, the same policies might not yield identical outcomes in societies with different housing or labour markets. 

Poland’s generous, nearly-universal cash benefit policy is an example of a pro-natal policy that is working, showing that substantial financial support can have an impact. In contrast, Hungary’s more limited and targeted financial incentives are less effective.

Summing up all these complexities, a study by the Lancet quantifies the potential for pro-natal family policies at only about 0.2 births per woman after five years. More worryingly for countries that already have very low fertility, research by the OECD concludes that family policies could be much less effective once TFR falls below 1.5 children per woman.

Searching for solutions: pro-natal culture

As societies move beyond basic survival needs, cultural convictions increasingly shape decisions, including those about family size. And in fact pro-natal culture is emerging as having the biggest potential to maintain fertility at sustainable levels.

Which is problematic in policy terms for at least two reasons. The first being that culture is the aggregated beliefs of whole populations of individual people, and thus not a simple policy lever that governments can pull. The second being that, for many governments to advocate larger families would clash with strongly embedded principles of personal autonomy and human rights that are seen as central organizing principles of modern societies.

And yet the evidence is strong that, where family policies alone have limited impact, pro-natal cultures, whether organic expressions of people’s choices or encouraged and amplified by governments, can have significant impacts on fertility.

France has maintained a significantly higher TFR than most European countries over decades (see chart). Compared with neighbours, the country also stands out for its long-standing and consistent pro-natal policies, maintained for over a century. For example, measures like the “Code de la famille” in 1939 included financial incentives and benefits for larger families. Academic research suggests these financial benefits may have increased French fertility significantly. The consistency of these policies is seen as a key factor in their effectiveness, fostering a cultural environment where having children is supported.

Georgia provides an example of how establishment bodies can influence pro-natal attitudes. The head of the Georgian Orthodox Church’s offer to baptize third and subsequent children led to a noticeable increase in births of higher orders, demonstrating the impact of religious encouragement on fertility.

Mongolia also has a strongly pro-natal culture, and a fertility rate significantly higher than its Asian neighbours with similar economic conditions. This is linked to consistent encouragement from leaders to have more children and the celebration of motherhood for 68 years. The state actively raises the status of mothers; for example, mothers of six receive the Order of Glorious Motherhood, First Class. This overt pronatalism contrasts sharply with the anti-natal messaging prevalent in much of Asia.

Israel stands out with exceptionally strong pro-natal beliefs compared with other developed nations, and where having children is almost seen as a national duty. Despite being a crowded, educated, and technologically advanced country, Israel has a TFR of nearly 3. Even though birth control and abortion are widely available, society strongly conveys the value of parenthood and especially motherhood.

Israel’s pro-natal culture in part stems from early leaders, who emphasized the importance of having children. It also appears to reflect a broader sense of being an identity under threat from neighbours – for example, the country appears to have had a baby boom during the recent Gaza conflict.

Some key points emerging from these examples include that building a pro-natal culture is never a quick fix, but only happens over multiple generations, requires consistent support from government, and cannot reasonably be imposed on a population that is unwilling to embrace it.

As the example of Israel shows, having a clear sense of political community is an invaluable starting point. But achieving this through a sense of existential threat from neighbours is hardly a policy that any government would willingly emulate.

Higher levels of religious belief tend to correlate with higher fertility, and as the example of Georgia shows, can be harnessed to encourage people to have more children. However, countries can’t pick and choose their people’s religiosity or religion, nor are all religions pro-natal – the Abrahamic religions all encourage fertility, for example, but Buddhism doesn’t, and fertility is alarmingly low in most Buddhist countries.

Where countries have a strong underlying pro-natal culture, or at least sustained government encouragement of having children over decades, then financial incentives and social support systems layered on top seem most likely to have a positive effect, as evidenced by the case of France, and more recently by Poland, with its Family 500+ program.

Putting pro-natalism into practice

Increasing numbers of governments are becoming more aware of the dangers of persistent below replacement fertility. How should they approach the task of beginning to bend the curve back upwards?

A good starting place is the concept of the “fertility stack” introduced by writers Daniel Hess and Paul Morland. This is the idea that fertility factors work cumulatively, meaning that the more factors a place has working in its favour, the higher its fertility rate will be. 

Hess and Morland suggest that the fertility stack can be used as a toolkit to understand and diagnose the causes of low fertility in different countries and groups and to identify what areas need improvement. For instance, they suggest that Latin America faces low marriage rates impacting fertility, Europe struggles with marriage and secularism, Mediterranean countries have issues with young people staying at home longer, and South Korea scores poorly on multiple factors like a lack of pronatal ethos and family-unfriendly housing. In contrast, Israel performs well on its pro-natal ethos but has room for improvement in areas like housing.

By breaking down the complex issue of low birthrates into a series of smaller, cumulative factors, the “fertility stack” aims to make the problem more manageable and suggests that addressing multiple factors simultaneously is likely necessary to reverse fertility decline. The authors believe that with a proper diagnosis using this toolkit and sufficient commitment, countries can solve the problem of too-low fertility.

A non-exhaustive list of policies governments could consider, depending on a country’s specific situation and where it is on its demographic transition journey would include:

• Make fertility a political priority. At the very least, governments should acknowledge declining fertility as a serious issue and begin speaking publicly about it. Political parties should speak about fertility in their election manifestos. 
• Counter anti-natal messaging. Governments should distance themselves from anti-natal messaging prevalent in some countries, either via specific networks like the environmentalist Birthstrike in the UK and ironically named Letzte (or last) Generation in Germany, or Korea’s feminist 4B, a movement that urges women not to date or have sex with men, marry or have children. Apart from specific groups, governments also need to challenge a more widespread belief in Western society that people are a bad thing for the planet.
• Promote a more pro-natal culture. This is an incredibly broad challenge for societies, but a foundation must be to foster societal respect for parenthood. Those choosing to have or support families, including grandparents, can be praised without denigrating those who don’t.
• Encourage committed relationships. While maintaining freedoms for people to form a variety of different relationships, governments should recognize that marriage is strongly associated with higher fertility, almost certainly because it represents the greatest level of long-term commitment. Any government serious about becoming pro-natal cannot remain entirely disinterested.
• Raise fertility awareness. Across Western countries there is strong evidence of a fertility gap, meaning that people are having fewer children than they say they would like. There are many reasons for this, but one is a lack of widespread understanding of fertility windows, with women’s fecundity, or chance of conceiving, declining rapidly beyond about the age of 20 (see chart). Bluntly, in countries with persistent below replacement fertility, more women need to begin families earlier.

• Ensure sufficient housing for families. In some countries the high cost of housing appears to be a significant factor preventing people from having children or having fewer than they desire. High prices are exacerbated in many large cities, where a preponderance of high-rise living in flats correlates strongly with very low fertility. Countries with these issues should boost housing supply, with a particular focus on creating the sorts of accommodation that are desired by families.
• Provide practical support for families. While there’s debate about their effectiveness, pro-natal policies that provide financial support, accessible childcare, and work-life balance measures can help alleviate some of the burdens of parenthood and make it more feasible for individuals to have their desired number of children. The evidence is that measures are more likely to work if layered on top of broader efforts to promote natalism.
• Incentivize larger families. In many countries, an increasing number of people choosing to remain childless is an important driver of declining TFR. Given this trend it becomes more important that more of those who choose to have children have larger families. Specific measures to encourage people to have many children should be considered.

• Encourage return migration and domestic employment. Countries with both low fertility and a net outflow of migrants might need to focus on retaining their reproductive-age populations by citizens who have emigrated to return and by creating more opportunities for decent work at home
• Expand reproductive options. Even with modern medicine pregnancy and birth are uncertain, life-changing and risky for women. Given rising average age of childbirth greater availability of in vitro-fertilization could help. There is increasing research into creating artificial wombs that could carry babies to term, though these would not be permitted under current regulations.

Reconciling fertility with modernity

For all the problems in the world, for most people in most countries this is the best time in the history of humanity to have been born. Infant mortality has never been lower, life expectancy has never been higher, more children are receiving more education, living standards are up and absolute poverty down. Even deaths from war and natural disasters are down overall.

Over the past 30 years or so, climate change has been widely seen as the greatest threat to this progress, with some environmentalists predicting millions of deaths due to global warming, and billions due to the systems change and cascading failures resulting. Without questioning the prudence of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, global fertility decline is in fact far more likely to lead to far fewer people than even the worst hypothetical scenarios for climate change-driven devastation.

Human extinction is not plausible due to pockets of high fertility in a few countries and general high fertility in sub-Saharan Africa. However, virtual extinction of many national cultures is entirely possible, driven by populations falling to very low levels, and/or large-scale demographic replacement through immigration.

Ultimately, reconciling modernity with sustaining humanity demographically is a complex challenge that requires a multi-faceted approach, beginning with adopting some new concepts. These include the “baby-money-index”, a measure that combines gross national income (GNI) with TFR to give a new way of measuring the health of nations that is better than wealth alone, or alternatives like the UN human development index.

For individual governments the first step necessary is to begin speaking about higher fertility as something desirable. There is a particular need for liberal and progressive politicians and thinkers to engage given the difficulties of reconciling higher fertility with individual, and particularly female autonomy, whose freedoms the political left have generally championed.

If the recent publication of the book “Abundance” by American writers Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson is anything to go by, then there is perhaps hope. The idea that environmental sustainability could be compatible with material plenty has been an exclusively right-coded idea for the past 20 years; but in one fell swoop Klein and Thompson shifted the “Overton Window” of acceptable discourse on the left across the Anglosphere, and soon into the rest of the world. The same now needs to happen for fertility – with a hat-tip to American writer Noah Smith for trying in 2024. Fertility and stable populations, like climate change, should not and cannot be politicized issues – but rather issues of common cause for humanity.

References

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