10-06-2025
Financial constraints and housing putting people off having children, survey finds
Young people feel their future has been robbed, with millions around the world unable to have the number of children they want, the UN's reproductive health agency has warned.
The UN Population Fund's (UNPFA) annual survey reflects fears similar to those held by young Irish people facing a housing crisis, as fertility levels also decline here.
Ireland's fertility rate per woman is reported as 1.6 compared to the global rate of 2.2, even though maternal deaths in pregnancy data show Ireland is one of the safest countries to have a baby.
A large-scale survey across 14 countries found the top reasons for not having as many children as desired are financial constraints (39%), job insecurity (21%) and housing (19%).
Other reasons included climate fears (9%) and people under 40 — especially women — citing worries about unequal division of domestic work between men and women.
'It is not uncommon for young people to feel cheated — to believe that their futures have been robbed from them by policymakers impervious to their lived realities,' the UNFPA said.
It called for urgent action on what it described as 'the real crisis in fertility', as people reported an inability to make free and informed choices about when to have sex or use contraception or start a family.
Executive director Natalia Kanem said the data showed some people chose not to have children for ecological reasons.
'They're worried about overpopulation,' she said. 'And it's simply not true that individual decision to not have a child is going to create the end of climate change, or whatever it would be.'
She said what was needed instead was changes in government policy.
'So managing family-supportive policies, making sure that housing costs and the intense expectations on parents can be tempered by social policy,' she said. 'This would go a long way to address those barriers.'
Many African countries see a trend for population growth, but in Jamaica and many European countries populations are shrinking, she said.
The data also shows 'we're stalling now on gender equality', she told a media briefing.
Across 14 countries surveyed, two children was the most commonly desired family size.
However, 11% of adults believe they will have fewer children than they choose and 7% believed they will have more.
The report also highlighted changing attitudes to teenage pregnancy as contributing to falling fertility rates.
In Ireland, the birth rate among women aged 15 to 24 stood at three births per 1,000 women during 2001 to 2024. Argentina saw births among this age group drop from 64 per 1,000 a decade ago to 25 in 2022.
Birth remains dangerous in many countries. While in Ireland the maternal mortality rate is four women's deaths per 100,000 live births, this reaches 628 in Liberia.
Afghanistan also has limited maternity care, leading to a maternal mortality rate of 521 per 100,000 live births.
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