Millions of people are prevented from having the number of children they want by a toxic mix of economic barriers and sexism, a new UN report has warned.
Factors such as the high cost of parenthood, job insecurity, expensive housing, concerns over the state of the world and the lack of a suitable partner stop people having the families they want, rather than any desire not to have children, theUN Population Fund (UNFPA), said.
While right-wing governments, including the US andHungary, are increasinglyblaming falling fertility rates on a rejection of parenthood, the UNFPA’s 2025 State of World Population report found most people wanted children.
Dr Natalia Kanem, executive director of UNFPA, said: “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.”
A poll for the report carried out by YouGov in 14 countries found almost a fifth of people said they did not have the size of family they desired, with one in nine believing they would have fewer children than they wanted and 7% that they would have more.
The leading barrier to having children was money, with 39% of people saying financial constraints had either led to them having fewer children than desired or were likely to do so.
Women were nearly twice as likely as men to say that an unequal division of domestic labour was a factor, while both men and women said fears about the future, including around climate change and conflict, had meant they limited their family size.
“Many countries are grappling with ageing and shrinking populations, labour shortages, and rising healthcare and pension costs. These are real concerns, yet they are leading some to the wrong conclusions,” said Kanem.
“Rather than promoting women’s workforce participation, which is actually shown to improve economic productivity, amid population ageing there seems to be a growing insistence that women and young people have more children.
“In some cases, it may be the neighbour next door urging you to get married before it’s too late. In others, it may be the government putting up advertisements that basically say the same thing. And in some instances, it is countries imposing restrictions on the availability of contraceptives and other services.”
However, neither coercive policies aimed at increasing births (such as restrictions on abortion and contraception), nor financial incentives such as US proposals fora $5,000 “baby bonus”paid to new mothers, nor efforts to tackle decreasing fertility rates appear to have much long-term impact and could backfire, the report warns.
Lack of access to safe terminations led to unsafe abortions, a leading cause of maternal death and of infections that caused infertility, Kanem said.
“We also see that when people feel their reproductive choices are being steered, when policies are even just perceived as being too coercive, people react and they are less likely to have children.
“Clearly,” she added, “the answer lies not in limiting choice or selecting who gets to exercise choice; the answer is to expand real choice to all people.”