Across continents and cultures, a quiet demographic crisis is taking shape, one that’s reshaping societies, economies, and the very future of nations. At the center of this shift is a growing number of people who want children, but simply cannot afford to have them.
Peace Niyoyita, a mother living in Gasabo District, knows this dilemma all too well. She and her husband, both working modest jobs, have debated whether to have a second child since their daughter was born five years ago.
But the answer always circles back to affordability. From school fees and transport to swimming lessons and medication, the costs of raising even one child are stretching the family thin.
“We just used to go to school, nothing extracurricular. But now you have to send your kid to swimming, you have to send them to games and sports, you have to see what else they can do,” Niyoyita says.
Her story is becoming a global norm. According to a new report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), declining birth rates are no longer just a statistic but a pressing global issue.
In a survey of 14,000 people across 14 diverse countries, including South Korea, the US, South Africa, and Germany, one in five respondents said they either had fewer children than they wanted or didn’t expect to reach their desired family size.
Their main reasons include financial stress, lack of time, and the difficulty of finding a suitable partner.
In some countries, the problem is particularly acute. South Korea now has the world’s lowest fertility rate at just 0.72 births per woman. Hong Kong, Singapore, and Macao follow closely behind, with figures well below the 2.1 replacement level needed to maintain a stable population.
Even high-income nations such as Germany and Japan are not immune. Germany recorded just 677,117 births in 2024, its lowest number in two decades, while Japan saw 900,000 more deaths than births in the same year, deepening fears of an aging, shrinking population.
While infertility accounts for some of the gap, especially in countries like Thailand, South Africa, and India, UNFPA’s data shows that the more pressing barriers are economic and social.
In all surveyed nations, 39% of respondents pointed to financial limitations, with South Korea reporting the highest at 58%. Even more telling, the biggest reason cited across the board was lack of time.
People are overwhelmed by the pressures of daily life, long commutes, and demanding jobs, leaving little space for parenting.
For Niyoyita, this rings painfully true. She spends at least two hours a day commuting to work and comes home too exhausted to give her daughter the time and attention she feels she deserves.
“Obviously you have that guilt, being a mom, that you’re not spending enough time with your kid. So, we’re just going to focus on one,” she says.
For decades, the focus of international policy was on curbing high birth rates and ensuring access to contraception but this is a critical shift in the global conversation on fertility.
As the UNFPA Executive Director Dr. Natalia Kanem points out, the challenge has flipped. “Fertility rates are falling in large part because many feel unable to create the families they want. And that is the real crisis,” she notes.
While the fear of a shrinking population has led some countries to consider pro-natalist or even nationalist policies, there is need for thoughtful, inclusive approaches.
Today, what is seen is a lot of rhetoric of catastrophe which leads to this kind of exaggerated response, and sometimes a manipulative response.
What the data reveals is not that people don’t want children, but that the social and economic systems around them are failing to support that desire. In a world where parenthood is becoming a luxury, the real question may not be how many children people want, but whether they’ll ever be able to afford them.
