Low fertility isn’t a crisis. It may even be progress
By Luisa Orozco
The global decline in birth rates has triggered a wide range of reactions: some deny it altogether, others warn of an impending generational crisis, and many argue that women should have more children to reverse the trend. In the midst of that debate, Nandita Bajaj, director of the nonprofit Population Balance, offers a different perspective. She argues that falling birth rates reflect something positive: women gaining more control over their bodies and their life choices and reduced human impact that is in greater balance with the rest of nature.
“So… we don’t have to have children?”, Nandita Bajaj asked her partner over a decade ago.
Bajaj, originally from India, thought that having kids was an inevitable part of being a woman. “My country is deeply patriarchal and also the most populated. I grew up believing that pregnancy was an essential part of womanhood. Then a conversation with my partner opened my eyes to the liberating realization that it was a choice, not a given. And together, we chose not to,” she says.
Since then, Bajaj began paying closer attention to the pressures on people to have children. “Were there others like me who didn't know that not having children was a choice? How much freedom do women really have? Because adult life tends to be treated as incomplete without kids, and choosing otherwise often brings direct or silent judgment,” she says.
Bajaj then discovered the term “pronatalism”: the societal pressure, primarily on women, to have kids, encouraged not only by relatives but also by several institutions. Though the concept was new to her, she soon discovered that it has been the subject of several academic studies, “and yet its power remains unnoticed in the broader culture – from religious messages to be "fruitful and multiply", and pressures from family for grandchildren, to celebrity gossip about the latest baby bump, and the media coverage about women not having enough babies.”
“Pronatalism is one of the oldest and most pervasive elements of patriarchy”, Bajaj states.
Today, she holds a Master of Education in Humane Education and is a Senior Lecturer at Antioch University. Bajaj is also the Executive Director of Population Balance, a U.S. based nonprofit with a clear goal: examine the connections between pronatalism, reproductive rights, and ecological sustainability.
In recent years, one issue has dominated headlines: declining global fertility rates spell disaster. Several political leaders and advocacy groups have framed it as a “crisis” and appealed to pronatalism as a way to solve it, encouraging people–especially women–to have more children.
Their arguments tend to repeat the same points: fewer births will mean too few workers, an aging population, and an economy under strain.
Bajaj thinks differently. “Let’s start with the basics”, she patiently says.
Pronatalism is not new
For the last decade, Bajaj has dedicated her work to studying demographic trends. She has published several papers in academic journals, written dozens of media articles, and given over 100 presentations globally on pronatalism. What she found is that the rhetoric of a “fertility crisis” often rests on outdated and inaccurate assumptions.
Pronatalism, she notes, is not a new phenomenon. “It has existed for about 5,000 years, since the rise of city-states and empires. Elites relied on population growth to strengthen state power. They needed soldiers and workers, so women were systematically disempowered in order to produce children, and patriarchy was born. And since then, the human population has grown from a few million to over 8 billion today.” she explains.
Fertility decline, however, is a relatively new phenomenon; global birthrates have been falling since the 1970s.
Bajaj calls it "one of the most positive trends in recent history. It reflects greater reproductive choice – research consistently shows that wherever and whenever women have greater self-determination, through education and access to contraception, they choose to have fewer or no children, and birthrates fall."
The Population Reference Bureau (PRB)—one of the most trusted sources of global demographic data—defines two key concepts: The total fertility rate (TFR) is the average number of children a woman is expected to have during her lifetime. The replacement rate, often cited as 2.1 children per woman, is the approximate number needed for a population to maintain its size across generations.
The global average fertility rate has fallen from around 4 children per woman in the 1970s to 2.2 today.
Two-thirds of the world’s population now live in countries where the total fertility rate is below the replacement level of 2.1, which includes almost all high-income countries and most of Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia. Still, fertility remains high in sub-Saharan Africa, parts of South Asia, and some Pacific islands, though rates are gradually declining.
But PRB is very clear: using 2.1 as a “magic number” for population stability can be misleading. Even when fertility is below that number, the population can still grow for several decades because many people are still in their reproductive years.
“Using 2.1 as a target can exacerbate fear about population decline and lead to policy solutions that focus only on raising birth rates,” PRB warns.
Bajaj adds, “This focus on raising birthrates is based on the expectation that economies must always grow, which is delusional on a finite and ecologically fragile planet.”
Not enough young people to replace the old? Not quite true
The fears around fertility decline are overblown. An often cited fear is that, as birth rates fall, the old-age dependency ratio is also declining. This ratio, according to the UN, is the number of individuals aged 65 or older per 100 people of working age, defined as those aged between 15 and 64 years old.
As Bajaj notes, “this metric fails to acknowledge the dramatic shifts in recent decades. A 65-year old today is more likely to be active and working in older societies; plus, as fertility rates have declined, female labour participation has greatly increased. So, that ratio is a lot smaller than it's assumed to be."
She also points to the high rates of under and unemployment in most countries due to discrimination, especially among seniors, people with disabilities, people of color, youth, women, and foreign-born workers. “As labor markets tighten, employers are forced to offer higher wages, benefits, and working conditions for employees. This not only enables people across all groups to gain meaningful employment, it also helps to improve economic equality and personal and societal wellbeing”, Bajaj explains.
A more serious conversation is needed
PRB emphasizes that declining fertility reflects both economic pressures and deeper social and cultural shifts. Rising living costs, unstable employment, delayed partnerships, and inflexible workplaces make having children harder, while greater value placed on education, careers, and personal freedom has reshaped ideas about family and what a fulfilling life should look like.
The decline is also a sign of progress: lower child mortality and wider access to contraceptives are some examples.
“Many women are choosing to stay single, remain childfree, or have fewer children. This undermines deeply entrenched conservative values and economic structures dependent on population growth”, Bajaj adds.
In her words, when low fertility is framed as a bad thing, we see a rise in coercive pronatalist policies: restrictions on contraception and abortion, the so-called “baby bonuses” to encourage couples to have kids, and misinformation campaigns that shame women for not having children or for having only one child.
This is not new. PRB has warned that many governments regularly turn to cash bonuses, tax credits, or monthly child allowances in an attempt to raise fertility. These policies can help families, but do little to increase the number of children they choose to have. Instead, they mainly shift timing, encouraging births a bit earlier. Even extremely costly programs rarely have a lasting impact on national fertility rates.
For example, a 2022 article published in Nature shows that, even if they make life easier for parents and bring real social benefits, pronatalist policies don’t persuade people who don’t want children to start families.
At the same time, policymakers often misinterpret what is actually driving fertility trends. Birth rates are not dropping because infertility is skyrocketing; according to a 2022 study published on Human Reproduction Open (one of Oxford academic journals), global reviews show no evidence of that. Delayed childbearing does reduce the biological window, but the broader decline is shaped by economic uncertainty, gender inequality, and changing aspirations.
Cutting access to contraception or abortion doesn’t reverse the trend either. PRB provides some examples: Romania’s abortion ban in the 1960s briefly spiked births and then triggered a humanitarian crisis of hundreds of thousands of orphaned children. And, more recently, U.S. states that restricted abortion after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization —the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that removed federal constitutional protection for abortion— saw only modest, temporary increases in births, even as their overall fertility continued to decline.
For Bajaj, any conversation about fertility must start with a simple premise: women must have the right to decide whether and when to have children.
But, for her, that is still very hard to achieve because that choice is not really there. For Bajaj, the panic around low fertility misses a much bigger issue: the ecological crises fueled by unchecked human expansion. She believes governments should leave “growthism” behind and invest instead in healthy aging, reproductive freedom, education, care-orientated policies, and social protection.
“Ultimately, if we want a just and sustainable society that lives within Earth’s limits, we have to redesign our economies,” she says. “They’re meant to serve us —not the other way around.”