Spain is among the twelve countries globally with the lowest birth rate in 2025, according to the study “The True Fertility Crisis” by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). For the first time, this study addresses the “demographic collapse” worldwide and suggests that countries change their current natalist approach from a “compulsive” policy to one focused on helping people have the children they desire.
Spain’s Alarming Birth Rate in Detail
The State of World Population 2025 report, presented in Madrid on Tuesday, puts Spain’s birth rate at 1.2 children per woman of childbearing age. This places Spain alongside Italy, Lithuania, Belarus, Japan, and Thailand at the forefront of low birth rates, surpassed only by Chile and Malta (1.1), China, Ukraine, Singapore (1), and Korea (0.8).
The UNFPA – the United Nations organization promoting unintended pregnancies and safe births – reminded that the generation replacement rate is 2.1 children per woman in a world with 8.232 billion people, projected to reach 10 billion this century. This growth is primarily due to several African countries (Angola, Chad, Mali, Niger, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Somalia) where fertility rates remain above 5 children per woman.
A Historic Turning Point: Global Fertility in Decline
Luis Mora, UNFPA expert in sexual and reproductive health, noted during the report’s presentation that the world population has tripled since 1950, while the global fertility rate has simultaneously dropped from 5 to 2.25. “This historic turning point has never happened before,” he reflected, adding that “one in four people lives in a society characterized by an aging population, fewer and fewer children and adolescents, and a shrinking workforce.”
However, the study warns against current alarmism that portrays a “world drifting away due to declining birth rates, with warnings of pension system bankruptcies, declining native populations, or migration movements.” Instead, the UNFPA emphasizes that millions of people worldwide are “unable to achieve their personal fertility goals” and proposes measures aimed at removing obstacles that prevent people from starting the families they desire.
The Challenge of Having Two Children: Desire vs. Reality
The report, based on a survey of 14,000 people from 14 representative countries, shows that the majority of the population desires to have two children. However, 18% of people of childbearing age feel it will be “impossible” to achieve this.
When asked about those over 50 with completed reproductive lives, one in three (31%) stated they had fewer children than they wished, and 12% had more than they wished. 38% reported having the ideal number (two), and the rest did not respond. The study also reveals that one in three people (or their partners) had an unintended pregnancy in their lifetime (32%). One in four experienced a period where they wished for a child but could not fulfill that wish. Of these, 40% stated they had to give up on the desire for children. At least 13% had both an unintended pregnancy and problems with a desired child.
Economic and Social Barriers: Causes of the Birth Rate Decline
The report investigated the causes of why people do not have the desired number of children. From the respondents’ answers, the main obstacles are “economic restrictions” (39%), precarity (21%), and difficulties in accessing housing (19%). Second to the cost of living is concern for the future, “with the fear of wars, pandemics, and climate change” (19%), which leads them to have no children or fewer children than they would like. Furthermore, other personal issues also have an impact, such as the absence of a suitable partner at the right time and a lack of shared responsibility in the distribution of household chores.
The authors of the report criticize the societal tendency to blame the decline in fertility on women’s will. They state that this approach is “a mistake” because men also play an indispensable role in reproduction. They also describe recent measures, such as the prohibition or limitation of voluntary abortion or the prohibition of medical abortions, which are increasing in some European countries and the United States, as “ineffective.”
Solutions for the Fertility Crisis: A New Approach
Luis Mora affirmed: “These natalist policies with coercive characteristics do not work, and the focus of attention on low fertility must be on the real desire of people and couples to have children, what their expectations are, and that most want two or more children but cannot fulfill them.”
The UNFPA proposes that countries take measures to promote job stability and access to housing. Also important are state family support measures, “not punctual, but governmental,” such as a fixed sum per birth, accompanied by flexible work under the premises of gender equality, workplace nurseries, and leave for caring for sick children. In short, workplaces favorable to families “in all their diversity” – a policy that, unfortunately, they lament, “is accessible to very few workers around the world today.” Finally, the United Nations organization is committed to “recognizing the importance of migration for natural growth.”
