A UN survey of 14,000 adults suggests people aren't simply choosing smaller families — one in five expect fewer children than they want, blocked less by a rejection of parenthood than by cost, insecure work and fear of the future

In June last year, the The United Nations Population Fund released its annual flagship report and challenged a common story about falling birth rates: that people, given freedom and prosperity, simply want fewer children.

The State of World Population 2025 report, subtitled “The real fertility crisis: the pursuit of reproductive agency in a changing world,” essentially argues the story has the cause backwards. Drawing on a UNFPA/YouGov survey of roughly 14,000 adults across 14 countries, it finds that many people are not having the families they want, and that the gap is driven by economic and social barriers rather than a turn away from parenthood.

The survey is one piece of evidence, not a global census. However, the countries it covers were chosen to span low-, middle- and high-income nations with both high and low fertility. Together those 14 countries are home to over a third of the world’s population, which makes the pattern worth taking seriously even as a single snapshot rather than the last word.

What the survey actually found

The headline figure is the gap between what people want and what they expect. Nearly one in five adults expect they will not be able to have the number of children they want. Among older respondents the picture is sharper: around 40 per cent of those over 50 said they had not had as many children as they wanted.

The framing from experts is blunt. “Vast numbers of people are unable to create the families they want,” said Dr Natalia Kanem, the agency’s executive director. The claim that people are unable rather than unwilling rests on the survey rather than census data, and the agency presents it as the report’s central argument. Kanem put the distinction directly: “The issue is lack of choice, not desire, with major consequences for individuals and societies,” she said.

Cost, insecure work and fear of the future

When respondents were asked what stood between them and the family they wanted, money came first. Financial limitations were cited by 39 per cent, the single most common barrier, with more than half flagging economic concerns of some kind. Behind that sat job insecurity or unemployment, named by 21 per cent. “Infertility or difficulty conceiving” accounted for only 12%. 

These barriers are not spread evenly. The variation between countries is wide: in South Korea, almost three in five respondents reported financial limitations as an obstacle, far above the share in economies such as Sweden (19%).

Why the ‘choice’ framing gets it wrong

The familiar reading often treats low fertility as the sum of individual preferences, the natural endpoint of women’s education and rising incomes. The survey complicates that. It suggests the constraint is often material.

The drivers are almost certainly a mix rather than a clean binary, and people’s stated reasons in a survey are not the same as a measured cause. Still, the agency’s point is that the demographic numbers are downstream of something else. “Low birth rates aren’t the real crisis; they are just a symptom,” argued Florence Bauer, the agency’s regional director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, in an accompanying piece.

What the gap means for policy

If the barrier is cost and insecurity rather than desire, the obvious lever is paying people to have children. Bauer’s explanation for why these baby bonuses tend to underperform is plain: “The costs of having a child, both financially and, especially for women, in terms of lost career opportunities, are generally so high that even generous government payments only cover a small part,” she wrote. The report also warns against coercive responses, citing Romania’s 1966 ban on abortion and contraception as a reminder of where fertility targets can lead.

What it proposes instead is less a single fix than a list of conditions. Part of the answer, in Kanem’s framing, lies in responding to what people say they need: “paid family leave, affordable fertility care, and supportive partners.” Whether governments anxious about shrinking workforces will treat that as the task, rather than reaching for the simpler instruments the report cautions against, is the question the survey leaves open. Closing the gap would probably mean changing the cost of housing and the security of work, which a one-off payment does not do.