Why are people across the world having fewer children? In an interview with LSE’s Anna Bevan, Berkay Ozcan discusses the scale of declining fertility rates, whether immigration might provide the answer, and what a fall in the world’s population would mean for the environment.
Why are we having fewer children?
There are various reasons why we are having fewer children. One of the primary reasons is that the formation of couples is happening at a later age. If you form a couple at the age of 30, for instance, you only have a biological clock window of about 10 to 15 years to fit children into.
An underlying reason for that is women have increased participation in higher education and better careers. In Claudia Goldin’s terms, women are increasingly choosing “careers” rather than “jobs” and that can lead to delayed couple formation and ultimately delayed childbirth. This reduces the total number of children that women can have.
We are also seeing more people choose to avoid having children at all. This is a different process and reflects shifting societal norms. The picture varies significantly between different countries. In some countries, there are many single-child households. In other countries, it is more polarised, with many households having no children but many others still having three or more.
Can you give examples of how birth rates have changed in Europe?
The generally accepted replacement rate for a population is 2.1 children per woman. This is the number of births you need to effectively replace the number of people that die and maintain the same population.
Almost all of Europe has fallen below the replacement rate. In some countries, such as Italy and Spain, there have been very low fertility rates since the early 2000s, with the rate falling to about 1.2 children per woman. Most countries in Europe are now around the 1.4-1.5 children per woman mark.
In the first 15 years of the 21st century, there were some countries that seemed to have success at boosting the fertility rate. Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, as well as France fitted this pattern. These countries were hovering around the 1.8-1.9 mark.
This was often attributed to policies to support women and the generous welfare state in these countries. But in recent years, from just before the COVID-19 pandemic until today, fertility rates have also fallen in these countries and they have moved closer to the European average.
This presents something of a puzzle. We thought that countries with a generous welfare support system could encourage people to have more children, but now there’s more of a convergence in fertility rates across Europe. This raises the possibility that there is something more going on in terms of cultural expectations about having children.
So what else is going on?
We don’t know yet. A lot of policymakers are interested in understanding what could promote a higher fertility rate. Some countries, such as Poland, have implemented extensive pronatalist policies to encourage people to have more children, including cash transfers. The general picture with policies like this is they can create short-lived increases in fertility, but there is a convergence over time.
These policies respond to the feeling that having children is simply far more expensive now than it used to be. But while this might play a role, it doesn’t explain the trends we are seeing across the world. Even in those countries that are providing a lot of support to parents, the fertility rate has still declined in the last seven years. This is a global phenomenon which suggests it is bigger than just the cost of raising children or the policy landscape in a particular country.
And historically, we have seen trends like this before, for example in high-income countries in the 1920s. This was short-lived and there was a recovery later on. Some people argue that the decline in fertility rates we’re seeing today is more long-term and that we’re unlikely to see such a strong recovery. But it is worth noting this is not the first time we have seen a trend like this in global history.
Is a shrinking population really a problem?
This is a very good question. There are some academics like Vegard Skirbekk who have argued that a decline in fertility rates is not all bad. The idea is that we have seen a massive increase in the population of the world since the mid-twentieth century and reducing this could help protect the environment.
I partly agree with this, but on the other hand, if we are saying the problem with a large population is environmental pressures, then there are other solutions to that beyond simply reducing the population. Things like redistribution and lifestyle changes are more important for protecting the Earth’s resources than the sheer size of the population.
If consumption stays the same as it is today, then Arctic resources will be depleted even if there isn’t a single new baby born. Similarly, many of the Sub-Saharan African countries that still have high fertility rates have a very small carbon footprint when compared to the United States.
The key to protecting the environment is not the size of the population, it’s the way we live our lives. Our lifestyles and consumption habits will deplete resources far more quickly than having more babies will.
Is immigration the solution to declining birth rates?
There’s a big debate about this. A decline in birth rates will lead to population ageing and a reduction in the population. A few countries have gone through this cycle already, like Japan and South Korea. Some European countries like Greece have also entered the shrinking stage.
When this happens, the median age becomes older and it puts pressure on healthcare and pension systems. It also makes labour shortages in crucial areas more likely. Immigration could be part of the solution for these labour market shortages.
But if you want to reverse population decline, immigration is problematic. For one thing, there is research showing that after a while the fertility patterns of immigrants tend to converge with the patterns of the native population. We tend to think of immigrants integrating into the local culture as a positive thing, but if they start to think about family formation in the same way as local people then we end up back where we started.
This means you would need a constant flow of immigrants and there’s a political cost to that for governments. Many people believe a large influx of immigrants is both socially and politically costly due to the adaptation process. This means that immigration is not a silver bullet for falling birth rates. It is part of the solution, but it isn’t the whole solution.
In some countries, like France, where the decline in the fertility rate has not been that dramatic, a small amount of immigration could replace some of the lost population and fill labour market shortages. But for countries like South Korea, it’s unrealistic to expect the country would be able to encourage and manage migration on the kind of scale that’s required.
This interview features extracts from Why are we having fewer children?, an LSE iQ podcast episode.
Note: This article gives the views of the interviewee, not the position of LSE European Politics or the London School of Economics.
Image credit: 3enjipix provided by Shutterstock.
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