According to the United Nations the Fertility Gap, and not Merely Falling Birth Rates, Is the Real Fertility Crisis

What if we stopped talking about the fertility drop, as in falling birth rates, and started talking instead about the fertility gap – as in, the difference between the number of children people say they would like to have and the number they actually have? This is not just the main message of this very platform, The Why Wait Agenda, but also the one delivered by the United Nations. Namely, it is exactly how UNFPA (the United Nations Population Fund) frames its latest State of World Population report: “The Real Fertility Crisis: The pursuit of reproductive agency in a changing world”.

This shift in perspective could not be more urgent: instead of falling back on the tired narrative of blaming women for declining births or fueling fear about demographic collapse, we need a more constructive framework. Linking lower birth rates to panic over pensions and societal stability in an ever more multicultural world, only obscures the real issue: policies and barriers shaping people’s actual family choices. This demographic anxiety blurs our focus from the true crisis – meeting and enabling people’s family aspirations.

We should, instead, start taking into account the many barriers that prevent people from starting a family. These barriers can be «economic precarity, gender discrimination, lack of support from partners and communities, low-quality sexual and reproductive healthcare, lack of access to services like affordable childcare or education, and pessimism about the future». Each is a political issue in its own right and contributes to the fertility gap.

For fertility rates are not always «the result of free choice». Even in the most advanced, liberal countries, we're still far from a full «reproductive agency», which is, as UNFPA put it, «a person’s ability to make free and informed choices about sex, contraception and starting a family – if, when and with whom they want».

Given this alignment in values and message, UNFPA's report was one of the two publications (the other one was the Economist's “Fertility policy and practice: a Toolkit for Europe”) highlighted at The Why Wait Agenda's event at the European Parliament in December 2025. The report, authored by researchers Amanda Chatata, Nyovani Madise, Monika Mynarska, Anita Raj, Agnese Vitali (a speaker at the event), and Rebecca Zerzan, and featuring watercolour artwork by Graham Dean, Marianna Gefen, Cyan Haribhai, and Stina Persson, is a remarkable read. It presents the results of original research by UNFPA and the international polling firm YouGov, focusing on people's ability to realise their fertility aspirations and to form families. Answers were collected in fourteen countries: the Republic of Korea, Thailand, Italy, Hungary, Germany, Sweden, Brazil, Mexico, the United States, India, Indonesia, Morocco, South Africa and Nigeria.

UNFPA advocates for every individual to be able to make their reproductive choices freely, and that includes both the choice not to have children – avoiding pregnancy through contraception, and interrupting unwanted ones through legal and safe abortion – and the choice of having children. Both should be considered reproductive rights, as the Why Wait Agenda's Pledge also states.

«Men and women face significant barriers to realising their fertility aspirations. Yet popular rhetoric, and even political discourse, continues to assign responsibility for falling marriage and fertility rates to women alone», the report states: «Media, academics and policymakers continue to presume both that fertility decline is an issue of female choice and that women are unreliable reporters of their own internal desires».

We're in dire need of equality, even in the fertility department: reproductive choices don't only concern women, and the fight for reproductive rights shouldn't be carried out just by women, or “for” women. Having children is a complex affair, a choice seldom taken solo; also, the same person may experience the lack of reproductive freedom in a sense in a certain moment of their life (i.e., not being able to access contraception or abortion), and in another sense in another moment of life (i.e., not being able to access to medically assisted reproduction). Most of all, the idea that «unintended pregnancy might be a solution to underachieved fertility on the individual level, or low fertility rates on the macro level» is utterly out of place: «The answer is no», the report deadpans.

Bottom line: «The gap between desired and achieved fertility is present everywhere we look – and in some places this gap is a chasm» (even if «a growing number of people are voluntarily choosing to remain childfree»). In some places more than others: «Only 1 per cent of respondents in Italy under age 50 expected to have more children than desired», for example, «compared with as many as 14 per cent who reported expecting to have fewer than they would ideally choose». So, one in seven Italians is already aware that they will experience the fertility gap firsthand. And many more do experience it, without expecting it.

There is, UNFPA states, a «policy window of opportunity» right now, though: «Policy interventions can remove at least some of these barriers so that individuals and couples are able to achieve their fertility aspirations, whatever those aspirations may be». How? «Better policies are needed», the report suggests, «both to enable people to prevent unintended pregnancies and to have children when they are ready for them. Both needs can be addressed by ensuring that the full range of sexual and reproductive health services are available and, ideally, well integrated into primary health systems».

This is a crucial aspect: now that late childbearing is becoming the norm in advanced countries (also because «the actual ages at which young people are able to attain economic independence and parenthood are too often older than the age of peak fertility and the age considered ideal by young people themselves»), we mustn't forget that «the postponement of childbearing may clash with the onset of infertility, which considerably lowers the chances of conception».

The problem here is also the lack of awareness, for «individuals are often unaware of biological age limits to fertility, overestimate the probability of pregnancy at advanced ages, overestimate the age at which male and female fertility starts to decline». Hence the importance of including fertility among the topics of sex education – and to target even older age groups such as 25-29, and 30-35, to let them know about fertility preservation and reproductive medicine options (even if, of course, «medically assisted reproduction cannot be the only long-lasting solution to empower people to have the children they want at later ages»).

In this regard, UNFPA also stresses how specific groups of citizens are often denied access to medically assisted reproduction, which is in many countries «restricted to married heterosexual couples of reproductive age». An unfair status quo that leaves space for improvement: «Within this challenge is an opportunity – a chance to equalize access to fertility care for those currently left behind, whether they are ethnic minorities, economically disadvantaged, members of the LGBTQIA+ community or single individuals seeking an unconventional path to parenthood».

Of course, addressing the fertility gap requires more than just access to medically assisted reproduction. It also involves investing in and promoting «stable income support to families and stable employment», «family-friendly workplace policies», «paternity leave», and «improving work-life balance for all workers – not only parents – in order to mitigate the stigma of using parental leave accommodations». And much more.

Ultimately, closing the fertility gap and truly enabling people to make free, safe reproductive choices is a complex challenge. It cannot be solved quickly or cheaply. Success demands broad alliances and continued focus on the fundamental issue: ensuring people can achieve the families they want. As happened when The Why Wait Agenda brought the UNPFA report to the European Parliament, presenting it to a packed audience – and quite a few actual policymakers among them – who care not only about birth rates but also about reproductive and sexual rights and freedom of choice.