Fertility rates across many countries have converged, despite starting from very different levels

In the thirty years since I was born, fertility rates in my country, the United Kingdom, have not changed much. In 1993, the fertility rate was 1.8 births per woman. Thirty years later, it had dropped only slightly, to 1.6 births.

Elsewhere, the change has been much more dramatic; fertility rates have dropped sharply and are now similar to those in the UK.

You can see this in the chart, which shows the change in fertility rates from 1993 (in blue) to 2023 (in red). In Qatar and Iran, rates dropped from almost 4 births per woman to 1.7.

Fertility rates have fallen a lot across Asia and South America, too — Malaysia and Colombia are two examples (my colleague Esteban previously wrote about the latter). This marks a much faster demographic transition than many countries experienced historically.

Convergence isn’t the whole story, though. Here, I’ve picked countries with fertility rates that are similar to the UK’s today. But some have fallen far below these levels: in Chile and Thailand, the fertility rate was 1.2 births per woman in 2023, and may have fallen even further.

Where this page came from

This page was imported from Our World in Data. “Fertility rates across many countries have converged, despite starting from very different levels” by Hannah Ritchie, published by Our World in Data under CC BY 4.0. Changed here: set as a page, its interactive charts shown as pictures. Data from third parties keeps its own licence.

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