Two in five people over 50 say they have not had as many children as they wanted – with economic issues, health concerns and fears about the state of the world among the main barriers.
More than half said financial factors such as affordable housing, childcare options and job security were things that had limited, or would limit, their ability to grow their families.
One in four said health issues were holding them back, while a fifth of respondents mentioned fears about global issues including climate change, wars and pandemics.
The findings come from a new survey of over 14,000 people by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) – spanning 14 countries on five continents that are home to a third of the world’s population.
Birth rates have been declining across almost all regions of the world, while life expectancy continues to grow.
There are concerns, from politicians and commentators like Elon Musk, that future generations of working age people will find it more difficult to economically support people of pension age as the ratio of workers to pensioners shifts.
“Vast numbers of people are unable to create the families they want,” said Dr Natalia Kanem, executive director of the UNFPA.
“The issue is lack of choice, not desire, with major consequences for individuals and societies. That is the real fertility crisis, and the answer lies in responding to what people say they need: paid family leave, affordable fertility care, and supportive partners.”
Differences around the world
The survey was carried out in four European countries, four in Asia, three across Africa and three from the Americas.
The countries were picked to try and represent “a wide variety of countries with different cultural contexts, fertility rates and policy approaches”, according to the report’s editor Dr Rebecca Zerzan.
It includes, for example, the country with the lowest fertility rate in the world – South Korea. It also includes country with a birth rate among the highest in the world, which also happens to be the most populous country in its continent – Nigeria.
The others, in order of population size, are India, the US, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Germany, Thailand, South Africa, Italy, Morocco, Sweden and Hungary.
In many cases there were significant differences in responses depending on which country people were reporting from.
For example in Nigeria, a third of men (although only 21% of women) reported that they wanted to have four or more children. The numbers were similar in South Africa. However in South Korea, Thailand, Italy, Germany and Hungary, no more than 5% agreed.
Fertility issues were twice as likely in the US (16% of respondents) as in neighbouring Mexico (8%).
In South Korea, three in five respondents reported financial limitations as an obstacle.
But in Sweden, where both men and women are entitled to 480 days of paid parental leave per child (which can also be transferred to grandparents), fewer than one in five said the same.
How paternity leave in the UK compares to other countries
Birth rates in Sweden are still among the lowest in the world, however. Dr Zerzan told Sky News that this shows that no one factor alone contributes to people feeling empowered to have children at the right time.
“A third of people in Sweden say they think raising a child will take up too much time and energy. And a higher number of people there, compared with other countries, are also concerned about climate change and bringing a child in to an uncertain world.”
Unintended pregnancies vs not as many children as wanted
A curious finding from the survey is that, while there has been much discussion around declining fertility rates, almost a third of people said they or their partner had experienced an unintended pregnancy.
Globally, as people who become pregnant unintentionally often do so more than once, half of all pregnancies are unintended.
In Morocco and South Africa, around half of people had experience of an unintended pregnancy. In the same two countries, more than half of people had experience of being unable to have a child at their preferred time.
Overall, one in eight people had experienced both an unintended pregnancy and barriers to a desired child.
“Everywhere we look, people are struggling to freely realise their reproductive aspirations,” explains the report.
People who had more children than they wanted, and people who had fewer, were present in countries with high and low fertility rates.
“That indicates that barriers to achieving one’s ideal family are ubiquitous.”
What can be done to help?
The report says that the crisis does require political interventions, but warns against policies that often amount to short-term fixes, or those designed to coerce people to either use or not use contraception.
“Whether the policies are coercive or not, there are real risks to treating fertility rates as a faucet to be turned on or off. Many of the countries that are today seeking to increase fertility have, within the last 40 years, sought to decrease birth rates.
“For example, China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Thailand and Türkiye all reported in 1986 an intention to lower their national fertility rates through policy interventions, deeming their respective fertility rates at that time as ‘too high’. By 2015, however, all five countries had switched to policies designed to boost fertility.
“Today all five have total fertility rates below two children per woman.”
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling, we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
