Fertility rates are falling across every world region, with most now below the level needed to maintain population size, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of United Nations and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data published earlier this month.
The total fertility rate — the number of children an average woman is expected to have over her lifetime — has dropped worldwide since 1950. In Latin America and the Caribbean, for example, fertility declined from 5.8 births per woman in 1950 to an estimated 1.8 in 2025. In Asia, the average fell from 5.8 to 1.9 over the same period.
Africa continues to have the highest fertility rate, though it too is decreasing, from 6.5 in 1950 to about 4.0 in 2025. The region is the only one still above the “replacement level” of 2.1 births per woman, the benchmark needed to sustain population size without immigration. The UN projects that Africa will not fall below this level until 2091.
By contrast, Europe and Northern America currently have the lowest fertility rates in the world, at 1.4 and 1.6, respectively. Oceania, which today averages 2.1 births per woman, is expected to drop below the replacement level by 2028. By 2100, rates are projected to fall to 2.0 in Africa, 1.7 in Asia and Oceania, and 1.6 in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The share of births to younger mothers is also expected to decline. Today, 41% of babies in Africa are born to women under 25, but by 2100 that figure is projected to fall to 24%. In Asia, the share is forecast to decrease from 33% to 16%, and in Latin America and the Caribbean from 39% to 17%. In every region, women ages 25 to 34 are expected to account for the largest share of births by the end of the century.
Governments facing shrinking populations are responding with policies designed to encourage parenthood. China has announced national subsidies of about $500 per child per year until age 3, following the end of its one-child policy in 2016. Other East Asian nations, including Japan, have expanded parental leave and child care, while several European countries spend more than 3% of their gross domestic product on family benefits such as allowances, tax breaks and subsidized child care.
Pew noted, however, that there is little evidence such policies succeed in reversing fertility decline.
