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People are having fewer children all over the world, affecting separate regions in different ways. Newsweek has mapped out which countries have the lowest and highest fertility rates to break down where demographic shifts are happening and what impact they are having.
Globally, the fertility rate, the average number of births per woman, was 2.2 as of 2023, the most recent year for which the World Bank has official data—this is down from 4.7 in 1960. Although the world fertility rate has fluctuated throughout the decades, rising to 5.3 in 1963, it has been on a steady decline since.
Fears around birth rates are usually over how this demographic shift could lead to aging populations where there are not enough working-age people to support the elderly—the replacement level necessary to maintain population levels without immigration in developed countries is generally considered to be 2.1.
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The birth rate decline is a complex topic with no single cause but major cultural shifts and financial challenges in the aftermath of the 2008 crash are usually cited as major factors.
A decrease in births will affect different countries in different ways, posing specific risks to some before others but also being illustrative of social progress in many places. Newsweek has mapped out which countries had the highest and lowest fertility rates in 2023.
Lowest Fertility Rates
China’s fertility rate was 1 in 2023. The last time it was above replacement levels was in 1990, when it was 2.5. It hit its highest point over the last six decades in 1963, when it was 7.5.
Like many other countries, there will have been fluctuations, often inspired by the pandemic, throughout these years.
In 2024, China’s fertility rate rose slightly to 1.2 births per woman, a modest uptick from the previous year that many demographers attribute to the end of Beijing's strict pandemic lockdowns in late 2022.
Even so, China counted half as many births last year as in 2016, the year China ended its decades-old One Child Policy.
Other countries with a low fertility rate of around 1 include South Korea, Puerto Rico, Singapore and Ukraine.
Many central and eastern European countries have low fertility rates, including Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Estonia, Austria, Albania and Latvia—all between 1.2 and 1.4.
Several of these nations are struggling with low population growth rates (the average annual percentage change in population) in general, according to the World Factbook's estimates for 2024, with less immigration to mitigate declining birth rates than in Western European countries.
The United States has also seen a major decline in births, the rate was 1.6 in 2023. The last time it was above the so-called replacement rate was in 2007, when it was 2.1. The 2008 financial crash, and its lasting impact on the economy, especially the price of housing, is often cited by demographers as a major reason for why people have had fewer children. Indeed, this was the last year the U.S.’s fertility rate was above 2.
Highest Fertility Rates
Sub-Saharan Africa's fertility numbers are the highest of any major world region, at 4.3 children per woman. This high figure is despite the fact that the region, made up of 49 separate African nations, has also seen declines—from 6.5 in the 1960s, to 5.3 in 2000.
The U.N. Commission on Population and Development estimates that over the coming decades, more than half of all new people on the planet will be in sub‑Saharan Africa.
"Generally, countries in sub-Saharan Africa are in an earlier stage of the demographic transition, characterized by a relatively large share of children and youth," Patrick Gerland, chief of the Population Estimates and Projection Section, previously told Newsweek.
In other words, while countries in Africa have followed the rest of the world in lowering death rates, meaning there are more elderly people than there have been before, their higher birth rates mean their populations are mostly children and teenagers, meaning nations in sub-Saharan Africa have a growing working-age population
However, for this to be as beneficial as it could be during what Gerland called a “window of opportunity” for economic growth, "investments in areas like education and infrastructure will be crucial."
The Good News Behind Declining Birth Rates
There is often a lot of focus on the dangers of an ageing population, especially from governments who are trying to set up the economy in a sustainable way.
For example, U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has made the birth rate one of its priorities—it has explored giving women a "baby bonus" of $5,000, according to an April New York Times report, while lawmakers have also looked at making childbirth free for privately insured families and tying states' transportation funding to their birth and marriage rates.
But other academics, including global health economics professor Margaret Anne McConnell stressed that there is good news hidden in the declining birth rate in some of the positive cultural shifts it represents.
"Any time we see people being able to make fertility choices that suit their family, I think that's a success," she told Newsweek previously. "I think people choosing to have children later in life is also a success…To the extent that we can make it possible for people to reach whatever their desired family size is, I think that that would be a societal priority."
Similarly, demographer Karen Benjamin Guzzo said: "The decline in birth rates has been driven primarily by fewer births to women in their teens and early 20s, and these are births that are very often unintended.
"Unintended births are more often associated with poorer parenting and child maltreatment. So, people being able to avoid having births when they themselves would say they were too young, didn't have enough money, or weren't with the right partner—that's all good news."
"Young adults are less often having casual sex, and they're more often using highly effective methods of contraception, like IUDs," she told Newsweek. "Contraception allows people—but especially women—to plan their pregnancies so they can get education, have careers, find the right partner before having kids. It allows families to space their children the way they see fit."
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