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Three more EU member states – including the most populous, Germany – joined the list of countries with “ultra-low” fertility rates, underscoring the scale of the region’s demographic challenges .

officials statistics shows that Germany’s birth rate will drop to 1.35 children per woman in 2023, below the UN’s “ultra-low” threshold of 1.4 — depicting a scenario in which declining birth rates become difficult reverse.

Estonia and Austria also passed under the 1.4 threshold, joining the nine EU countries – including Spain, Greece and Italy – that in 2022 have fertility rates below 1.4 children per woman.

The fall in the birth rate partially reflects the “postponement of parenthood until the 30s”, which involves a “higher probability that you will not have as many children as you want because of the biological clock”, said Willem Adema, senior economist at the OECD.

Without immigration, low fertility rates mean a decline in the working-age population, increasing pressures on public finances and limiting economic growth.

With young people reaching life milestones, such as buying a house, later in life, the average age of women in the EU at childbearing will rise to 31.1 years in 2023, a years ago than a decade ago. The increase in the number is 31.4 in Germany, and more than 32 years in Spain, Italy and Ireland.

Austria reported dropped to 1.32 children per woman in 2023, from 1.41 last year. In Estonia, the rate hit 1.31 in 2023, up from 1.41 last year.

Birth rates are falling across Europe – even in countries like Finland, Sweden and France, where family-friendly policies and greater gender equality have previously helped increase the number of children.

In Finland, the birth rate was above the EU average until 2010, but it decreased to 1.26 in 2023, the lowest since records began in 1776, according to the official. DATA.

France has LONGEST birth rate of 1.79 children per woman in 2022, but the national numbers shows that it dropped to 1.67 last year, the lowest on record.

The rates also fell lower in countries where they were already very low, reaching 1.12 in Spain and 1.2 in Italy in 2023.

Guangyu Zhang, population affairs officer at the UN, called on governments to “put in place more family-friendly and gender-responsive policy measures,” saying it would enable women and men to have more child that surveys claim they want.

Experts believe that economic and political turmoil partly explain the trend of people having fewer children.

“Maybe you have a job, but if you’re worried about losing it, or worried about inflation or worried about the conflict in Ukraine, then you might hesitate to have children,” said Ann Berrington, a professor of demography at the University of Southampton. .

Changes in social attitudes may also be at play.

Adema said: “The rules of what it means to be a good parent and how strongly you participate in that is that many young people say: ‘Well, besides the fact that I can’t the children need to be happy, it’s also a difficult job for me to do, and I’m not sure I can handle that responsibility’.”