Three more EU member states — including the most populous, Germany — have joined the list of countries with “ultra-low” fertility rates, highlighting the extent of the region’s demographic challenges.
Official statistics show Germany’s birth rate fell to 1.35 children per woman in 2023, below the UN’s “ultra-low” threshold of 1.4 — characterising a scenario where falling birth rates become tough to reverse.
Estonia and Austria also passed under the 1.4 threshold, joining the nine EU countries — including Spain, Greece and Italy — that in 2022 had fertility rates below 1.4 children per woman.
The fall in birth rates partially reflects the “postponement of parenthood until the 30s”, which involves a “higher likelihood that you will not have as many children as you would like because of the biological clock”, said Willem Adema, senior economist at the OECD.
Without immigration, low fertility rates mean a shrinking working-age population, adding pressures on public finances and limiting economic growth.
With young people reaching milestones, such as buying a house, later in life, the average age of EU women at childbirth rose to 31.1 years in 2023, a year later than a decade ago. The figure rises is 31.4 in Germany, and over 32 years in Spain, Italy and Ireland.
Austria reported a fall to 1.32 children per woman in 2023, down from 1.41 in the previous year. In Estonia, the rate hit 1.31 in 2023, down from 1.41 in the previous year.
Birth rates have fallen across Europe — even in countries such as Finland, Sweden and France, where family-friendly policies and greater gender equality had previously helped boost the number of babies.
In Finland, the birth rate was above the EU average until 2010, but it dropped to 1.26 in 2023, the lowest since the record began in 1776, according to official data.
France had the highest birth rate at 1.79 children per woman in 2022, but the national figures showed it dropped to 1.67 last year, the lowest on record.
Rates fell lower also in countries where they were already ultra-low, reaching 1.12 in Spain and 1.2 in Italy in 2023.
Guangyu Zhang, population affairs officer at the UN, called for governments “to put more family-friendly and gender-responsive policy measures in place”, saying this would enable women and men to have the multiple children that surveys claim they want.
Experts believe economic and political upheaval partly explain the trend of people having fewer children.
“You might have a job, but if you’re worried about losing it, or worried about inflation or worried about conflict in Ukraine, then you still might hesitate to have children,” said Ann Berrington, professor of demography at the University of Southampton.
Changes in social attitudes might also be at play.
Adema said: “The norms of what it means to be a good parent and how intensive you should participate in that are such that quite a few young people say: ‘Well, in addition to the fact that I don’t need children to be happy, it would also be a very difficult job for me to do, and I’m not sure that I can take that responsibility’.”
I don't exactly see why you are so hostile, but I will not steep down to that level. I will instead explain my reasoning a bit more, maybe we can reach an interesting discussion yet.
I didn't read all your articles, but I read two of those before, so you are kinda right in that regard.
My reasoning is not that it's wrong in itself, mostly just unrealistic to achieve. I think it is easier for people to see that more people equal more destruction and stop having children than to change our system. Call me pessimistic, but I don't think I will see a different system in my lifetime.
Second, reduced fertility is a normal process with increased living standards, due to the wish to enjoy life more by yourself instead of "limiting" yourself by having kids, especially multiple ones. Also, it's not like people in the past had kids because they wanted to. It was mostly tradition, an economic investment and also maybe biggest thing: retirement planning. All of those are bad reasons for me. In my opinion, people should have children if they want to have them (and can care for them).
Third, as I wrote before, it's not exactly a secret that people at the top need people below them to be at the top. You can extract more wealth from millions than from hundreds. With an oppressive system, the more persons there are, the better they oppress each other and you can extract wealth from them. That's visible at nearly each point on our current worlds societies.
Fourth, and this is my biggest point: Earth is limited. There is a point where Earth can't sustain more people. And while we are still away from that point, at one point it would be reached if the number of people grows continually. So at a certain point, the growth needs to stop either way. So why not stop slowly now and solve the systemic problems, instead of continuing on and running into the metaphoric problemwall headfirst and then wondering why it hurts so much?
And fifth: I'm not advocating for anything to "stop overpopulation", because I think the problem solves itself if we don't force people to have children (by making abortion illegal or the whole tradwife nonsense etc.). I'm just deciding not to have children myself and I don't see a problem with falling birth rates that needs to be countered (yet).
Or to try and condense my political view in one question: why not try to limit suffering now by first solving our systemic problems instead of bringing even more children into our fucked up world.