Why are we having fewer children?

I’m outside Charlotte Sharman Primary School in Elephant and Castle, South London, on a pretty drizzly Tuesday morning. It’s just before 9am so the school bell should be about to ring but there are no children in sight: the gates are locked and the playground is empty. There’s flag bunting hung from one wall to the other wall across a colourful netball court and I’m peering through the gates to make out a sign near the entrance that says: “School starts at five to nine”. But not today. It’s deserted. That’s because this school was forced to close in August last year due to falling pupil numbers. Today the playground stands silent. And it’s a symbol of a much bigger story, not just here in London or even in the UK, but globally.

Welcome to LSE iQ, the podcast where we ask social scientists and other experts to answer one intelligent question. I’m Anna Bevan from the iQ team where we work with academics to bring you their latest research and ideas. And talk to people affected by the issues we explore. In this episode, I ask: Why are we having fewer children?

I discover how an intrusive taxi driver inadvertently started a childfree movement, find out why China’s started taxing condoms, and learn how conservative reproductive legislation in the US has actually increased abortions.

Fertility rates are at record lows around the world. Back in 1950, globally, there were around 5 live births for every woman. But in recent years that number has more than halved. It now stands at 2.2 and in England and Wales, it’s more like 1.4. That's low really low. In fact, it’s the lowest figure since records began. The UK’s falling birth rate is part of what the United Nations is calling ‘a global fertility slump’.

Now, you're going to be hearing a lot about numbers in this episode - it turns out population growth is something of a numbers game. So, let’s take a moment to properly understand these figures. And let’s start by understanding them in terms of grandparents. Back in the 1950s, when the global fertility rate was around 5, it meant that four grandparents would have 25 grandchildren. But today’s falling birth rates mean that four grandparents will have around five grandchildren.

The next important thing to get our heads around is something called the replacement rate. That’s the number of children needed to ensure a stable population from one generation to the next. And it stands at just over two children per woman. So, to put it crudely: the number of birth certificates needs to balance out the number of death certificates on a daily basis. If you take just one thing from this episode, then let it be that if a country’s fertility rate has fallen below 2.1 - the replacement rate - then that country’s population is shrinking. And more on why that matters a bit later. But first, let’s go to a country that has been witnessing one of these steep fertility decreases.

Berkay Ozcan: I'm originally from Turkey, and Turkey is one of these dramatic declines. In eight years, it declined from 2.1 to 1.4. And in the western part of the country, for example, like if you divide the country from the middle Western part of the country in certain like very populous areas, they have the fertility rates equal to Korea and Japan, like it's rapidly aging almost 1.1.

Anna: That’s Berkay Ozcan, a social demographer at LSE and New York University who specialises in the social and economic impact of family processes like marriage and fertility.

Berkay: But what we see more dramatically is outside Europe, in the emerging markets, middle income countries, so to speak. Like let's talk about places like Mexico, places like, like other Latin American countries, and you can think about some of the South Asian countries. Asian countries and so on, they all have gone to dramatic declines. Chile has experienced dramatic decline in fertility. Costa Rica has experienced dramatic declines in their fertility. So like this is becoming a global phenomenon.

Anna: So Berkay why are we having fewer children?

Berkay: So there are various reasons why we are having fewer children. There are some mechanistic reasons. Basically we are having couple formation and stable couple formation, which is always some sort of, um, loosely enforced norm across societies to have children is being delayed to the like, like closer to the thirties in most advanced economies. So if you end up postponing marriage formation or couple formation in general where the babies are going to end up in stable unions to the 30s you have about 10 to 15 years of, um, biological clock or window where more children can fit into.

So the late marriages. Delayed couple formation is one of the primary mechanistic reasons. And the underlying reason to that is an increasing participation in women's higher education and like career jobs. And that's like shown in the literature that nowadays we have female labour participation, but women are not doing jobs. In the words of Claudia Goldin, Nobel Prize winner, ‘they're choosing careers over jobs’. And that makes, um, couple formation later. Childbirth later due to its costs earlier in life. So the delayed marriage, delayed childbirth results in reduction in the total number of children that women can have within their fertility window, biological clock.

Anna: Remember that key replacement rate of 2.1? The number which means a population can sustain itself? Well, almost all of Europe has now fallen below that. And it's been in steady decline for the past 20 years or so. But in 2000 there were some countries whose rates weren’t falling quite as fast.

Berkay: We have always pointed out some countries that are more successful increasing, like from that low fertile to the trend, slight upwards, such as the Scandinavian countries: Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and plus France as the countries that were relatively successful in not lowering their fertile rate too much and they were hovering around 1.8, 1.9, just below the 2.1 rate.

Anna: Now, you might think that 0.1 or 0.2 of a percentage point wouldn’t really make much of a difference. Turns out it does. Let's go back to that grandparent equation.

Berkay: So if you are having say 1.8, 1.9 children, that means there are four grandparents that are gonna get three grandchildren, roughly speaking but if it's 1.1, 1.2, as we observed in Italy and Spain in the lowest low fertility, four grandparents will get one grandchildren only. So that being below replacement rate, there's a degree to which that translates into shrinkage rates in the population. So if you're 1.5, 1.4 ,four sets of grandparents will get two grandchildren. So that that is where the European average is. So four sets of grandparents are getting two grandchildren.

Anna: For a long time, Nordic countries were the exception to Europe’s declining fertility rates. Generous welfare policies were seen as a contributing factor to women being able to do it all: have successful careers and produce multiple offspring. But over the past decade, fertility rates there have been falling too. Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland all just recorded their lowest ever birth rates. And it’s baffling policymakers. So what else is going on?

We’ve heard about delayed couple formation impacting fertility windows. And the increased participation of women in the labour market compared to decades ago. But, as always, it’s a little more complicated than just these factors.

Berkay also told me that general uncertainty about the state of the world is another issue affecting people’s fertility plans.

And then there’s the economy. The high costs associated with having children: childcare, education, and the societal pressure of all those extracurricular activities. The exorbitant cost of housing is pushing many families out of cities in search of more affordable locations. And contributing to the closure of primary schools like the one we heard about earlier.

Societal norms about having children have also changed. Zoe Noble is a photographer and the founder of ‘We Are Child Free’ – a global storytelling platform to celebrate and support people who don’t have children.

Anna: Zoe, what compelled you to start ‘We are Child Free’?

Zoe Noble: Oh, probably pure frustration. I've always known that I didn't want to have kids, and I was just so frustrated with the way the world talked about people without children. The judgments that I faced from complete strangers, medical professionals. Even loved ones and I wanted to do something about it. I had been working as a photographer for, you know, ten years and I knew that if I could put a face to the movement, if I could share our stories, I could hopefully change the narrative.

Role models that I saw in the media were often depicted very negatively. When I think about, you know, Samantha from Sex in the City...

(Samantha clip)

Career obsessed, selfish, a nymphomaniac, all of these negative assumptions are were being made about any woman who decided that they didn't wanna have kids.

(Samantha clip)

So it was really difficult in my twenties to even say I didn't want children. And there was one particular story, um, when I was leaving an airport and I got a taxi. And this driver, he asked me, ‘do you have kids?’ And when I said, ‘no’, he, you know, he nearly crashed the car. He honestly, he couldn't understand why I decided not to have kids. I told him I was married, we had no plans of having them. Um, and for the 30 minutes in that, in that car ride, I was just bombarded with, uh, such negative stereotypes around women who didn't have kids that I would be, I would be alone, I would be unfulfilled, that I should just have one. And by the second I would love it. And I just, I just reached a breaking point and that was, that was in my probably my, uh, mid thirties, mid to late thirties, and that's when I picked up my camera and I decided to do something about it.

Anna: And did you always know that there was an audience for this?

Zoe: No. I honestly didn't even know the word child-free existed. I didn't know there was, if there was anyone else like me. I had spent my twenties being asked continually, uh, when are you gonna have kids? I got married in my, you know, mid twenties. So the questions intensified and I didn't know anyone else who said, I don't want to have kids. So I honestly didn't even know there was a choice really.

When I put out the message on my, my blog back then to say, I'm looking for child-free, or I'm looking for women who have decided not to have children. Um, I didn't know if anyone would respond and I had 40 women who replied back to me. And honestly, that was a life-changing moment to know that I wasn't alone, that there were other people like me, and that I could actually build a community with those women, which was amazing.

Anna: And what's the journey been like from the inception of the idea to where you are now?

Zoe: It's been a rollercoaster. I started it in 2017 as a small portrait series, and it basically, it really exploded. The project was featured in the New York Times, in many other international media, and suddenly I started to get hundreds of emails and dms from people all over the world saying ‘I finally feel seen’, like, I know there's nothing wrong with me now. And you know, I, I was really emotional receiving messages from people all over the world telling me that something that I had created and put out there was resonating with people. It truly changed my life and it, and from there I knew I had to keep going because reaching those people, it had changed their lives. I honestly don't see myself stopping this is, this is kind of my lifelong mission that I'm dedicating myself to.

Anna: And do you see it as a growing movement as well? Do you see there being more kind of enthusiasm for being child-free?

Zoe: I definitely see more people being vocal about it. I mean, we have social media, which has allowed us to have these platforms to be able to say, ‘Hey, I also don't want to have children,’ um, and connect with other people, which is amazing. I do believe that we, in our, in our day-to-day lives, we're hearing the word child-free more. We're seeing more people in our culture talk about not having kids, so that means people are being more exposed to it, which is a good thing.

You still see though, quite a backlash. I will often see if a woman talks about being child-free or not wanting kids, you just have to go into the comments of those articles and there are many people saying, oh, you'll be sad, you'll regret it, you'll be lonely. Uh, so that that stigma is still, still there. We're just able to put it out there more. When I see men talking about it, there's, there's not the same amount of stigma and insults thrown at them, which talks about the, the double standard around men and women and how we see their roles in society and, and how we view them as child-free.

But what I'm noticing is, is almost like the more vocal that we become, the more of a backlash I am seeing. You know, I am seeing more death threats, rape threats. I am, I'm seeing more people who are watching women perhaps choose a different path, choose themselves even, and they not like that.

We are choosing ourselves and that really scares a lot of people. When you live in a patriarchy and a pro natalist world, that tells everyone that women must have and want kids. When women decide not to do it or to have fewer kids, that really scares those, those people. They want more bodies on this planet. They need more workers, more taxpayers, more consumers in a capitalist world as well. And when we say no and choose smaller families, or we choose no to have no children, that starts to shake the foundations that they have built through, uh, you know, these kinds of Ponzi schemes which rely on endless growth.

We see things like the pope telling people that child-free people are selfish. We have political leaders talking about your childless cat ladies....

(JD Vance clip)

Talking about why those without children are selfish that they don't have a stake in the future. All of these false assumptions about us, I'm reading that more and more, seeing more articles, which worries me about where the future is going because we see our rights being rolled back. You know, when Roe versus Wade overturned, that was a really big turning point. We recognise that we're gonna need to continue to advocate for our community because as our rights are rolled back, maybe there's a day where we don't have access to contraceptives.

Anna: Earlier on, we heard how people coupling up later in life is impacting fertility levels, as is the general state of the world and the increased cost of living. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. While the number of women choosing to be childfree is increasing, it doesn’t account for the dramatic reduction in global fertility rates. So what’s the real reason we’re having fewer children? And what are governments doing about it?

In many countries around the world, women have had access to the contraceptive pill since the 1960s, so they’ve had more control over the timing and size of their family. It seems unimaginable that that choice would be rolled back. But, well, it already is in subtle – and not so subtle - ways in certain countries around the world.

In January, China imposed a tax on condoms and other contraceptives for the first time in three decades as the country tries to boost its birthrate. But do these types of government interventions actually have any impact on fertility levels?

Emily Jackson is a Professor of Law at LSE. She says there are a range of things that governments have tried to do to incentivize people to have more children.

Emily jackson: Those tend to be things like tax breaks, um, baby bonuses, cash payments for, um, for having children, better childcare arrangements, cheaper childcare arrangements, things that basically make it a bit easier for people to, to have children. They have a very modest effect in general on birth rates. They don't have a dramatic effect. The reasons why people have children are not going to be hugely impacted by a modest baby bonus.

The one change that did have a very dramatic impact on birth rates was China's one child policy a few years ago where there were penalties for having more than one child. And that did lead to a reduction in birth rates. And of course, has led to this very uneven population curve now where they have more elderly people than working age people. And so they've, in a sense, gone into reverse and trying to now encourage people to have children. So that did have a major effect. But the, the efforts that, um, governments make to try to increase the birth rate, they do have a slight impact, they might impact the timing of having children, but they don't have a dramatic impact.

Anna: Xi Jinping is now offering $500 to families, uh, for each child they have that’s under the age of three. So bringing in the one child policy and then also going completely the other way. Does the pendulum shift like that quite often?

Emily: Certainly 50 years ago there was huge concern about, um, overpopulation and there being too many people for, for the world's resources and it was one of the reasons why initially there was quite a lot of scepticism about IVF and reluctance to fund research into IVF because the thought was in the 1970s that the world's problem was that there were too many babies, so we wouldn't want to make more.

So I think there are pendulums that swing here and, and it is in a sense a really dramatic change over the course of the last 50 years from thinking that the world is massively overpopulated to now lots of governments being quite concerned about declining fertility rates.

Anna: Yeah, I've read recently that in Poland and Iran governments have made it more difficult for women to access contraceptives because they're so worried about declining birth rates. Is that level of intervention common around the world?

Emily: No. I think not allowing women access to contraceptives is in public health terms a very dangerous thing. Um, because if you don't give women access to contraceptives, they're going to have more unwanted pregnancies, which they might try to terminate possibly illegally in a very unsafe way. So in public health terms, um, access free and easy access to contraceptives is a public health good. So where there are restrictions on access to abortion, for example, where you have countries with very restrictive abortion laws, one of the really interesting and consistent things that you see is that it does not lead to fewer abortions. In fact, interestingly enough, it looks as though since Roe versus Wade was overturned in the United States, the abortion rate has actually gone up.

(Supporting news clips: Roe Vs Wade)

So it doesn't lead to fewer abortions, it leads to less safe abortions and more health risks for women. I think if you want to increase fertility rates reducing access to birth control and abortion is not the way to do it.

Anna: We’ve spoken a little bit about how China has intervened. Are there any other governments who have been successful at pushing up the birth rate?

Emily: Government attempts to actually positively increase the number of children that women have. If they have an effect, it's always very modest. It's a very small effect. So, for example, France has quite, um, child friendly policies, Sweden does. And they may have slightly higher birth rates than some other comparable countries. But the effect is quite modest. So there are very good reasons for making workplaces child friendly, for making it easy for women to combine work and having children.

And there are good reasons for giving people help with childcare, for example. aside from trying to drive up the birth rate. That the reason you would want to have child friendly policies is because they'rea good thing, full stop, rather than because they're going to dramatically increase the number of children, women have because they're not. The effect will be a modest one.

Anna: And do you think there are things governments should be thinking of aside from fertility policies that may impact overall attitudes towards having children?

Emily: I've heard demographer, Rebecca Ser talk really eloquently about this. And she said, which makes perfect sense that if you want people to have more children, you need to make the society a place in which people want to bring children into the world.

So for people to feel positive about the future, to have a decent place to live. To have decent access to schools. Those are the sort of things that encourage people to have children because it feels like a good thing to bring a child into the world. If people are very fearful about the future and really worried about whether or not they're going to have a decent roof over their head.

That's not a circumstance in which people are going to feel that they want to, to have a baby. So I think in a sense, the things that you should be doing anyway to make society better for, for people, so decent housing, decent places to, to live and bring up children. They're a good thing to do. And they may encourage people to have children, but actually I think, I think governments should realise that the effect that they can have on the birth rate is going to be modest.

Anna: In 1950 the population was 2.5 billion and it now stands at more than 8 billion people. So it's more than a threefold increase in 75 years. So I'm just wondering, is a shrinking population really a problem? Can we continue to have sort of just constant growth?

Emily: I think the most important thing is, is, is precisely what you just said in the sense that populations fluctuate and the population of the world is very much bigger now than it was a hundred years ago.

What's particularly worrying governments now is the combination of women having fewer children and an aging population. So though the total population might be very large, a lot of that population is elderly and not economically active. And it's that distribution between the number of people of working age and the number of people who are dependent on services to survive.

That's the proportion that's worrying people rather than the overall number. But I think it's, it's true to say that populations do just fluctuate. And in a sense the getting terribly exercised about the fact that people aren't having enough babies now is probably not a sensible thing to do. The sensible thing is just to pursue policies to make people's living conditions as good as possible. And that may well mean that people have more babies.

Anna: So maybe the real impact governments can have upon fertility rates is to improve living conditions for people so they want to bring children into the world. And address housing costs so that schools like the one in South London aren’t forced to close because of falling pupil numbers.

This whole episode, I’ve been asking: why are we having fewer children? But maybe the question I should be asking is: does it even matter? Well, Berkay Ozcan, the social demographer we heard from earlier, thinks it does.

Berkay: It does matter for various reasons. It matters because first, eventual declines, sustained long periods, declines in the birth rates, results in rapid population aging. And a rapid shrinkage of the population.

A few countries have gone through this cycle already, like Japan, Korea, and they're well-known countries. So some of the Eastern European countries such as Greece and so on have also entered the shrinkage stage. And when these countries start shrinking their population and median age becomes really old it becomes a pressure on long-term care, healthcare systems, pension systems, so, and also the shrinkage in the critical areas of labour. So you are more likely to see labour shortages in crucial areas. So there's an economic cost to it for the society.

Anna: I asked Zoe Noble, from We Are Childfree, if she thinks shrinking fertility rates is anything to be concerned about.

Zoe: I see that, you know, lowering birth rates are a sign of progress. I really do. It's only a problem if people want to have children and they're not able to. So for those parents who want to have more children, yes, we absolutely have to look at why they're not able to have the amount of children that they want. For the people who are like me, who have never wanted to have children, who don't ever want to have children, we should stop pressuring those people - that is just scapegoating. And that's a perfect way to scapegoat a community of people and divide us even more. If we can put the blame on child-free people and child-free women and young people especially. We're not actually needing to do any changes. We don't actually need to solve economic or climate issues. We don't need to lower childcare, we don't need to lower housing crisis or sort inflation out. We don't need to do any of the issues that are actually causing the problems if we just put the blame on another group of people and, and right now that is child-free folks.

Anna: So we’ve heard that delayed couple formation and increased female participation in the workplace is causing people to have children later in life when they have a shorter fertility window; the increased costs associated with children and the uncertainty about the state of the world are also impacting fertility decisions; and that a change in societal norms means that more women are exercising their right not to have children.

Anecdotally, another argument I often hear from my own friends as a reason to have fewer or no children is a more philosophical one: the environment. In an age of overconsumption, extreme weather events and dwindling natural resources, are smaller families a good thing? I asked Berkay if climate change is significantly impacting people’s decisions on whether or not to have children.

Berkay: There is some experimental research, like with vignettes and scenarios being shown, and it seems like this research is taking place again in Sweden and Finland, where environmental consciousness levels of the average person, highly educated population, is like higher than other places, and they're finding some effects about pessimism in terms of climate change in Nordic countries and among the educated people and thinking whether it's worth bringing a child to this world that is rapidly depleting its resources. I don't think that that's a massive phenomenon that explains why we see decline in fertility rates in places like my own country. Majority of the people in Turkey, in the polls, they all talk about cost of living, macroeconomic crisis, political. Instability or economically insecurity, instability. Those are the reasons most people quote as reasons for why they're hesitant about having a child or a second child, rather than climate change comes in the down the list, very further down the list.

Anna: Berkay’s reflections on Turkey are echoed in a UN report on the fertility crisis published last year. From the 14,000 people surveyed, across 14 countries, 39 percent said their fertility plans were affected by financial limitations. While 20 percent listed fears about the future – so things like climate change, war, pandemics - as a reason why they've decided to have fewer children than originally desired.

The report concludes that the real crisis isn’t that people are having fewer children, it’s that people aren’t able to have the number of children that they want to due to the prohibitive cost of parenthood, the lack of a suitable partner and fears about the future of the planet. Government policies need to concentrate on fixing those underlying factors rather than solely focusing on incentivising births.

What do you think the future of the population looks like? Get in touch with us on our socials to let us know whether you think a declining population is a good or a bad thing.

This episode of LSE iQ was written, produced and edited by me, Anna Bevan, with script development from Sophie Mallett. If you’d like to find out more about the research in this episode, head to the shownotes. And if you enjoy iQ, please leave us a review to help other people discover the podcast.

Join us next time when Sue Windebank asks: How can we be more resilient?