Why are people in one of the world’s richest, safest countries having so few children? Singapore is asking that question. In 2000, its fertility rate matched America’s at 1.6 children per woman.
By 2025, it had dropped to 0.87 – almost half the US rate. Singapore’s leaders, worried about population collapse, have reached for the chequebook. Each child, including those born to unmarried parents, will get $55,000 in government support by the time they turn 17.
Yet a quarter of Singaporeans say they do not intend to have children. Wealth and security, clearly, don’t guarantee more babies. UN data shows that global fertility fell from 5.3 births per woman in 1963 to 2.2 in 2023.
But this masks a growing divide. In some poor sub-Saharan African countries there are around six births per woman. Compare this with England and Wales, where the figure is just 1.39.
More than half of the world – including a billion women in India and China – have a fertility rate below the global 2.1 “replacement level” needed to sustain populations without migration. But even in poor countries with high mortality rates and consequently higher replacement rates, births outpace deaths. In Nigeria, for example, the fertility rate of 4.4 exceeds its replacement rate of 2.6 children per woman.
To understand this phenomenon, the UN asked 100,000 18- to 39-year-olds from 73 nations their views on relationships and having children. The results, released in July, were striking: two-thirds said they want to marry or live with a partner. Those who did not have children overwhelmingly wanted them.
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