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Three more EU member states – including the most populous, Germany – joined the list of countries with “very low” fertility rates, showing the extent of the demographic challenges.
Officer mathematics show Germany's birth rate will drop to 1.35 children per woman by 2023, below the UN “ultra-low” threshold of 1.4 – indicating a situation where declining fertility rates are difficult to reverse.
Estonia and Austria also passed under the 1.4 threshold, joining nine EU countries – including Spain, Greece and Italy – to have fertility rates below 1.4 children per woman by 2022.
The decline in birth rates partly reflects “the postponement of parenthood until the age of 30”, which includes “higher chances that you will not have as many children as you would like because of the biological clock”, said Willem Adema, an economist at the The OECD.
Besides immigration, low fertility rates mean a shrinking working-age population, which adds pressure on public finances and slows economic growth.
With younger people reaching life stages, such as buying a house, later in life, the average age of EU women at childbirth will rise to 31.1 years in 2023, a year behind the previous decade. The number rises to 31.4 in Germany, and over 32 in Spain, Italy and Ireland.
Austria report fall to 1.32 children per woman in 2023, down from 1.41 last year. In Estonia, the rate hit 1.31 in 2023, down from 1.41 last year.
Birth rates have fallen across Europe – even in countries like Finland, Sweden and France, where family-friendly policies and gender equality had previously helped boost the number of babies.
In Finland, the birth rate was above the EU average until 2010, but will drop to 1.26 in 2023, the lowest since records began in 1776, according to the official. data.
France had it up birth rate to 1.79 children per woman in 2022, but nationally numbers showed that it was down from 1.67 last year, the lowest on record.
Rates have fallen even in countries where they are already very low, reaching 1.12 in Spain and 1.2 in Italy in 2023.
Guangyu Zhang, the UN's population affairs officer, called on governments “to put family-friendly and gender-responsive policy measures in place”, saying this would enable women and men to have more children that the survey says they need.
Experts believe that economic and political upheavals partly explain the trend towards fewer children.
“You can have a job, but if you're worried about losing it, or you're worried about inflation or you're worried about the conflict in Ukraine, you might be hesitant to have children,” said Ann Berrington, a professor of anthropology at the University of Southampton. .
A change in social thinking may occur.
Adema said: “The principles of what it means to be a good parent and how you should be involved so deeply that many young people say: 'Well, in addition to the fact that I don't want to have children.' I'm happy, it would be a very difficult job for me to do, and I'm not sure I can take that responsibility'.”