Falling Fertility: The Changing Value of Freedom, Fulfillment, and Family

Fertility has fallen in nearly all high-income countries. People also report wanting fewer children: between 2012 and 2022 the ideal number of children fell from 2.42 to 2.31 and the share of respondents intending a child within three years fell from 28 to 21 percent over a similar period. Why? Using two cross-national surveys that ask respondents about their attitudes and their fertility preferences, both fielded twice roughly a decade apart, we decompose each decline into the contribution of a broad and competing set of attitudes. Three stand out: children are increasingly seen as interfering with the freedom of parents; views on whether mothers of young children should work have become markedly more progressive and account for a substantially larger share of the decline among the tertiary-educated; and fewer people believe that women or men need children to lead a fulfilled life. This last attitude changed most over the decade and is the largest contributor to the fall in intended fertility, above all among less-educated women. The changing division of household work and increasing work-family conflict have minor contributions to changing fertility preferences.