Is childlessness the cause of declining fertility rates?
The Claim
Birthgap says…
“There is no trend towards smaller families. People who do become parents are just as likely to go on to have two, three, four, or more children as decades ago. It's all about having the first child, with childlessness having exploded.”
(Birthgap Part 1, 41:17)
“No more than half of women turning 30 without a child ever become mothers.”
(Birthgap, Part 2, 44:28)
The Reality
Evidence shows that there is a strong trend toward smaller families that comes with a combination of female empowerment, education, access to contraception, and women’s participation in the labor force. Declining fertility is the result of a trend in delayed parenthood and smaller family sizes in many countries, including trends of increasing childlessness in some countries, whether by choice or circumstance. There is no evidence to support the claims that “no more than half of women turning 30 without a child ever become mothers” or that there is an “explosion” of childlessness anywhere.
The claim is false.
The Research
In most countries that belong to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the average age of women at childbirth is now 30 or above, which is 2-5 years higher than in 1970. In almost all OECD countries, fertility rates among 20-24 year-olds and 25-29 year-olds are much lower today than they were in 1970. Meanwhile, fertility rates of 30-34s and 35-39s are much higher than they were in 1970 (OECD, 2023).
In addition, according to the OECD definition, childlessness can only be assessed at the end of women’s reproductive period between ages of 45 and 49 (i.e. women born between 1974-1978). For younger cohorts, it is impossible to discern whether women are temporarily or permanently childless (OECD, 2018).
The data from Pew Research Center for the U.S. shows varying trends:
The percentage of U.S. families with four or more children has shrunk dramatically from 40 percent in 1976 to 14 percent in 2014, while those with two children saw a steep rise (Pew Research Center, 2015).
One important cause of the declining fertility rate in the U.S. is that the teen birth rate has fallen dramatically, from 62 per 1000 teen girls in 1990, to 17 per 1000 teen girls in 2018 (Pew Research Center, 2019).
A 2018 study of 32 low-fertility countries found that low fertility rates were due to a variety of reasons. While in some countries such as Southern Europe, and East Asia, low fertility rates were the result of rising childlessness, in Central and Eastern Europe they resulted mostly from a rise in one-child families, and in Austria and Switzerland from fewer 3-child families (Demographic Research, 2018).