Millions of people want children but are unable to have them.
Millions of people are unable to have the number of children they want, but not because they are rejecting parenthood; it is economic and social barriers that are stopping them. This is the central finding of UNFPA’s 2025 State of World Population report: “The Real Fertility Crisis: The Pursuit of Reproductive Agency in a Changing World”.*
Drawing on academic research and new data from a UNFPA/YouGov survey spanning 14 countries – together home to over a third of the global population – the report finds that one in five people globally expect to not have the number of children they desire. Key drivers include the prohibitive cost of parenthood, job insecurity, housing, concerns over the state of the world, and the lack of a suitable partner. A toxic blend of economic precarity and sexism play a role in many of these issues, the report shows.
“Vast numbers of people are unable to create the families they want,” said Dr. Natalia Kanem, Executive Director of 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.”
The data paint a stark picture:
- More than half of people said economic issues were a barrier to having as many children as they wanted.
- 1 in 5 people reported having been pressured to have children when they didn’t want to.
- 1 in 3 adults had experienced an unintended pregnancy.
- 11% said that unequal caregiving burdens would undermine their ability to have children.
- 40% of respondents over 50 said they had failed to have the number of children they wanted.
The report warns against simplistic or coercive responses to declining birth rates – such as baby bonuses or fertility targets – noting that these policies are largely ineffective and can violate human rights.
Instead, UNFPA urges governments to empower people to make reproductive decisions freely, including by investing in affordable housing, decent work, parental leave, and the full range of reproductive health services and reliable information. Other solutions include expanding access to parenthood to LGBTQI+ and single people.
UNFPA also calls on societies to address all the ways that gender inequality undermines people’s family choices, including:
- Workplace norms that push women out of paid work
- Lack of paid flexible leave for men and stigma against engaged fathers
- Lack of affordable childcare
- Restrictions on reproductive rights, including contraception, abortion and fertility care
- Diverging gender attitudes held by young men and women, contributing to remaining single.
A tailored mix of economic, social, and political measures will be needed in each country to help people form the families they want. As policymakers consider how to navigate shifting population dynamics, UNFPA stands ready to support them in understanding the challenges they face and designing solutions that will ensure rights and choices for all.
- You can access the UNFPA report “The real fertility crisis: The pursuit of reproductive agency in a changing world” here: www.unfpa.org/swp2025*
- For more information about UNFPA, please visit: www.unfpa.org
*Please note the online version of the report will go live when the embargo lifts.
Media contacts:
- Eddie Wright (New York): ewright@unfpa.org; +1 917 931 2074
- Zina Alam (New York): zialam@unfpa.org; +1 212 297 2715
About UNFPA and the State of World Population Report
As the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency, UNFPA helps people obtain contraception and life-saving reproductive health services and information and empowers women and girls to make informed decisions about their bodies and lives. It also helps countries use population data to better understand and harness the opportunities that can come with demographic change.
The State of World Population report is UNFPA’s annual flagship publication. Published yearly since 1978, it shines a light on emerging issues in the field of sexual and reproductive health and rights, bringing them into the mainstream and exploring the challenges and opportunities they present for international development.
Findings
Fertility rates have fallen to below 2.1 births per woman – the threshold needed for population stability without immigration – in more than half of all countries that took part in the survey.
On the flip side, life expectancy continues to grow across almost all regions of the world, according to the survey
Right-wing nationalist governments, including in the United States and Hungary, are increasingly blaming falling fertility rates on a rejection of parenthood. But the 2025 State of World Population report found most people did indeed want children. The survey findings indicated that the world is not facing a crisis of falling birth rates but a crisis of reproductive agency.
How was the study conducted?
UNFPA surveyed 14,000 people from four countries in Europe, four in Asia, three in Africa and three in the Americas.
The study examined a mix of low-, middle- and high-income countries and those with low and high fertility rates. They were picked to try to represent “a wide variety of countries with different cultural contexts, fertility rates and policy approaches”, according to the report’s editor, Rebecca Zerzan.
South Korea, which is included in the study, has the lowest fertility rate in the world. The report also looked at Nigeria, which has one of the highest birth rates in the world.
The other countries included, in order of population size, were India, USA, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Germany, Thailand, South Africa, Italy, Morocco, Sweden and Hungary.
The survey is a pilot for research in 50 countries later this year.
When it comes to age groups within countries, the sample sizes in the initial survey were too small to draw conclusions.
Key findings
- 39 percent of people said financial limitations prevented them from having a child.
- Job insecurity and fear of the future – from climate change to war – were cited by 21 percent and 19 percent of respondents, respectively, for reasons to avoid reproducing.
- 13 percent of women and 8 percent of men pointed to the unequal division of domestic labour as a factor in having fewer children than desired.
- Only 12 percent of people cited infertility or difficulty conceiving for not having the number of children they wanted. That figure was higher in Thailand (19 percent), the US (16 percent) and South Africa (15 percent).
- In South Korea, three in five respondents reported financial limitations as an obstacle to having children. It was just 19 percent in Sweden, where both men and women are entitled to 480 days of paid parental leave per child, which may also be transferred to grandparents. Still, birth rates in Sweden are among the lowest in the world.
Zerzan pointed out that no one factor alone accounts for falling fertility rates, however. “I fully agree with that,” said Arkadiusz Wisniowski, professor of social statistics and demography at the University of Manchester.
SOURCES: UNFPA Press Release: State of the World Report 2025, 10 June 2025 ; and AlJazeera, 10 June 2025.