Few children? Global uncertainties also affect the decision to have them

It has long been hypothesised that emerging global uncertainties — such as the worsening of climate change, the intensification of democratic and economic crises, and the escalation of armed conflicts — could influence decisions in the reproductive sphere, and this has now been confirmed by the international comparative study just published in the prestigious US multidisciplinary journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), Parenthood decisions in uncertain times: experimental evidence from four countries (“Decisioni sulla genitorialità in tempi di incertezza: evidenze sperimentali su quattro paesi”).

The fertility rate — the average number of children per woman — is now well below replacement level throughout the developed world. Classical theories have become poorly suited to explaining recent dynamics in reproductive behaviour, to the point that it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify the causes of this continuing decline. Although interpretations linked to economic hardship and gender inequalities have long dominated research on very low fertility, they are now challenged by the fact that fertility has also fallen markedly in those countries that have consistently shown better economic conditions, generous support policies and more egalitarian gender relations. 

The study was conducted by a research team from Università Bocconi di Milano together with Maria Letizia Tanturri, lecturer in the Department of Statistical sciences at the University of Padua. The research examined four countries — Italy, Germany, the United States and Argentina — which are of interest because they display different fertility trajectories and, at the same time, face distinctive combinations of socio-political as well as environmental challenges. 

“The ad hoc survey, funded by the Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca (PRIN 2022), as part of the FER.MO project (Italians' FERtility MOtivations in disorienting and uncertain time), allowed us to carry out a sort of experiment on more than 8,000 individuals aged between 20 and 44,” Maria Letizia Tanturri, associate professor of Demography and co-author of the publication, emphasises. “We presented respondents with hypothetical scenarios in which a couple might find themselves, with different combinations of family circumstances and global situations, more or less favourable; respondents had to compare two scenarios at a time and decide in which of the two the couple would decide to have a child. In this way, we were able to study how individuals, in their reproductive choices, weigh up family resources, the gender-based division of domestic tasks, childcare services, as well as different types of macro-systemic uncertainty. In all four countries, income and housing stability remain central determinants of fertility intentions, while the availability of childcare services and the division of domestic tasks do have a positive effect, but a more limited one. At the same time, the perception of stability at the macro level — including expectations regarding climate conditions, economic prospects, democratic functioning and the absence of international conflicts — has a significant and almost similar influence on fertility intentions, albeit with some differences between countries. Macroeconomic stability and climate change, for example, play a crucial role in Argentina, whereas in the United States fertility intentions appear to be less sensitive to geopolitical conflicts; by contrast, in Germany they are more strongly shaped by fear of war and of a crisis in democratic institutions, while in Italy there is no single concern that clearly outweighs the others.”

To explain the current decline in fertility, it is therefore necessary to go beyond explanations focused solely on the characteristics of the family unit and on childcare policies (which remain relevant), recognising that individuals make family decisions within a broader context characterised by specific social risks. The results show that the decision to have children is not weighed by the young people interviewed solely on the basis of their own immediate circumstances, but also according to their expectations regarding the future of society as a whole: individuals worried about the fate of their country may decide not to have children, and this carries weight in a global situation characterised by a plurality of shocks. 

This therefore highlights the importance of including conditions of macro-systemic stability (and citizens’ expectations in this regard) in explanatory models of the current decline in fertility. Similarly, policy measures aimed at supporting fertility, in addition to focusing on family policies, should also take into account the extent to which citizens are exposed to global risks, how they perceive them, and how much they may be influenced by them in their reproductive choices.