The world is undergoing a profound demographic shift. According to new analysis from Pew Research, fertility rates have fallen sharply in every region since 1950 – a trend reshaping societies from Asia to Europe and increasingly raising alarm in governments.
Pew’s review of data from the UN and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) shows that Latin America and the Caribbean have seen fertility drop from 5.8 births per woman in 1950 to approximately 1.8 in 2025.
Africa, long the outlier with the highest global fertility, has declined from 6.5 to 4.0 in the same period, with projections that it too will approach replacement level later this century.
Meanwhile, North America and Europe are among the lowest worldwide, respectively averaging 1.6 and 1.4 births per woman.
China now sits at just 1.0 – one of the lowest rates ever recorded. The UK, however, is following the same trajectory.
Just last week, official statistics confirmed that fertility in England and Wales dropped again to 1.41 in 2024 – the lowest level on record. Scotland recorded 1.25, also a historic low.
The average age of mothers has now risen to 31, compared with 29 two decades ago, while fathers are approaching an average age of 34.
Speaking to The Financial Times, Oxford University professor of demography Melinda Mills explained that job insecurity, gender inequality, and the struggle to juggle work with family life are pushing many women to postpone motherhood — or to forgo it altogether. She added that unstable relationships are also part of the picture.
Experts warn these shifts will have far-reaching consequences.
As reported by The Guardian, the director of the Centre for Population Change at the University of Southampton, Prof Jane Falkingham, said: “We happen to be alive at this really transitional moment. We’re moving from a world with high fertility and high mortality to a world of low mortality and low fertility. We have to get our heads around how we’re going to make that transition from the old world to the new world.”
The policy implications are stark. By the 2030s, one in five British women born in the 1960s will enter old age without children. Fewer children means fewer working-age adults to fund pensions and public services.
It is likely the current trend will lead to an increased focus on funding social care but author and demographer Paul Morland told The Guardian it may soon be "impossible" to sustain the public finances and that the welfare state may become "unsustainable".
The pressures being felt across the world are causing many governments to introduce measures to encourage parenthood – from subsidies in China to generous parental leave and child benefits in Europe – but Pew notes the evidence that such policies lift fertility is limited.
It may be that technology provides new solutions, such as Japan's experiment with AI robots to care for its elderly.
When it comes to Britain, experts say the real challenge lies in rethinking the structure of work, family life and care in a low-birth future.
Prof Falkingham told The Guardian: “We need to think about the ages we start work, the ages we finish work, and how we organise the life course. These are a lot of big policy challenges and we’ll have to think through what the solutions will be.”
