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The total fertility rate ( TFR) of a population is the average number of children that are born to a woman over her lifetime, if they were to experience the exact current age-specific fertility rates (ASFRs) through their lifetime, and they were to live from birth until the end of their reproductive life.
As of 2023, the total fertility rate varied widely across the world, from 0.7 in South Korea, to 6.1 in Niger. Among sovereign countries that were not city states or had a very small number of inhabitants, in 2024 the following countries had a TFR of 1.0 or lower: South Korea, Taiwan, and Ukraine; the following countries had a TFR of 1.2 or lower: Chile, China, Japan, Malta, Poland, and Spain.
Fertility tends to be inversely correlated with levels of economic development. Historically, developed countries have significantly lower fertility rates, generally correlated with greater wealth, education, urbanization, and other factors. Conversely, in least developed countries, fertility rates tend to be higher. Families desire children for their labor and as caregivers for their parents in old age. Fertility rates are also higher due to the lack of access to contraceptives, generally lower levels of female education, and lower rates of female employment.
From antiquity to the beginning of the industrial revolution, around the year 1800, total fertility rates of 4.5 to 7.5 were common around the world. 76-77, After this TFR declined only slightly and up until the 1960s the global average TFR was still 5. Since then, global average TFR has dropped steadily to less than half that number, 2.3 births per woman in 2023.
The United Nations predicts that global fertility will continue to decline for the remainder of this century and reach a below-replacement level of 1.8 by 2100, and that world population will peak in 2084.
The TFR is a measure of the fertility of an imaginary woman who experiences the age-specific fertility rates for ages 15–49 that were recorded for a specific population in a given year. It represents the average number of children a woman would potentially have if she were to go through all her childbearing years in a single year, subject to the age-specific fertility rates for that year. In simpler terms, the TFR is the number of children a woman would have if she were to experience the prevailing fertility rates at all ages from a single given year and survived throughout her childbearing years.
The NRR is not as commonly used as the TFR, but it is particularly relevant in cases where the number of male babies born is very high due to gender imbalance and sex selection. This is a significant consideration in world population dynamics, especially given the high level of gender imbalance in the heavily populated nations of China and India. The gross reproduction rate (GRR) is the same as the NRR, except that, like the TFR, it disregards life expectancy.
In particular, the TFR does not necessarily predict how many children young women now will eventually have, as their fertility rates in years to come may change from those of older women now. However, the TFR is a reasonable summary of current fertility levels. TFR and long term population growth rate, g, are closely related. For a population structure in a steady state, growth rate equals , where is the mean age for childbearing women.
The lowest TFR recorded anywhere in the world in recorded history, is for the Xiangyang district of Jiamusi city (Heilongjiang, China) which had a TFR of 0.41 in 2000. In 2023, South Korea's TFR was 0.72 the world's lowest for that year.
Outside Asia, the lowest TFR ever recorded was 0.80 for Eastern Germany in 1994. The low Eastern German value was influenced by a change to higher maternal age at birth, with the consequence that neither older cohorts (e.g. women born until the late 1960s), who often already had children, nor younger cohorts, who were postponing childbirth, had many children during that time. The total cohort fertility rate of each age cohort of women in East Germany did not drop as significantly.
It may take several generations for a change in the total fertility rate to be reflected in birth rate, because the age distribution must reach equilibrium. For example, a population that has recently dropped below replacement-level fertility will continue to grow, because the recent high fertility produced large numbers of young couples, who would now be in their childbearing years.
This phenomenon carries forward for several generations and is called population momentum, population inertia, or population-lag effect. This time-lag effect is of great importance to the growth rates of human populations.
TFR (net) and long-term population growth rate, g, are closely related. For a population structure in a steady state and with zero migration, , where is mean age for childbearing women and thus . At the left side is shown the empirical relation between the two variables in a cross-section of countries with the most recent y-y growth rate.
The parameter should be an estimate of the ; here equal to years, way off the mark because of population momentum. E.g. for , g should be exactly zero, which is seen not to be the case.
Factors generally associated with increased fertility include the intention to have children, very high level of gender inequality, inter-generational transmission of values, marriage and cohabitation, maternal and social support, rural residence, pro family government programs, low IQ and increased food production.
Factors generally associated with decreased fertility include rising income, value and attitude changes, education, female labor participation, population control, age, contraception, partner reluctance to having children, a low level of gender inequality, and infertility. The effect of all these factors can be summarized with a plot of total fertility rate against Human Development Index (HDI) for a sample of countries. The chart shows that the two factors are inversely correlated, that is, in general, the lower a country's HDI the higher its fertility.
Another common way of summarizing the relationship between economic development and fertility is a plot of TFR against , a proxy for standard of living. This chart shows that per capita GDP is also inversely correlated with fertility.
The impact of human development on TFR can best be summarized by a quote from Karan Singh, a former minister of population in India. At a 1974 United Nations population conference in Bucharest, he said "Development is the best contraceptive."
[[File:CIA WFB TotFertilityRate-GDP-Population - Simplified 2016.png|thumb|Total fertility rate vs per capita GDP for selected countries, 2016. Population size shown as bubble area. 30 largest countries in bold.
Many of these factors may differ by region and social class. For instance, Scandinavian countries and France are among the least religious in the EU, but have the highest TFR, while the opposite is true about Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Poland and Spain.
The natalist policy in Romania between 1967 and 1989 was very aggressive, including outlawing abortion and contraception, routine pregnancy tests for women, taxes on childlessness, and legal discrimination against childless people. It resulted in large numbers of children put into Romanian orphanages by parents who could not cope with raising them, street children in the 1990s, when many orphanages were closed and the children ended up on the streets, overcrowding in homes and schools, and over 9,000 women who died due to .Kligman, Gail. "Political Demography: The Banning of Abortion in Ceausescu's Romania". In Ginsburg, Faye D.; Rapp, Rayna, eds. Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995 :234–255. Unique Identifier : AIDSLINE KIE/49442.
Conversely, in China the government sought to lower the fertility rate, and, as such, enacted the one-child policy (1978–2015), which included abuses such as . In India, during the national emergency of 1975, a massive compulsory sterilization drive was carried out in India, but it is considered to be a failure and is criticized for being an abuse of power.
Some governments have sought to regulate which groups of society could reproduce through eugenic policies, including forced sterilizations of population groups they considered undesirable. Such policies were carried out against ethnic minorities in Europe and North America in the first half of the 20th century, and more recently in Latin America against the Indigenous population in the 1990s; in Peru, former President Alberto Fujimori has been accused of genocide and crimes against humanity as a result of a sterilization program put in place by his administration targeting indigenous people (mainly the Quechua people and Aymara people people).
Within these historical contexts, the notion of reproductive rights has developed. Such rights are based on the concept that each person freely decides if, when, and how many children to have - not the state or religion. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, reproductive rights "rest on the recognition of the basic rights of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health. It also includes the right to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence, as expressed in human rights documents".
Despite these high fertility rates, the number of surviving children per woman was always around two because of high mortality rates. As a result, global population growth was still very slow, about 0.04% per year.
These reductions in mortality rates, particularly reductions in child mortality, that increased the fraction of children surviving, plus other major societal changes such as urbanization, and the increased social status of women, led to stage three of the demographic transition. There was a reduction in fertility rates, because there was simply no longer a need to birth so many children.
The example from the US of the correlation between child mortality and the fertility rate is illustrative. In 1800, child mortality in the US was 33%, meaning that one third of all children born would die before their fifth birthday. The TFR in 1800 was 7.0, meaning that the average female would bear seven children during their lifetime. In 1900, child mortality in the US had declined to 23%, a reduction of almost one third, and the TFR had declined to 3.9, a reduction of 44%. By 1950, child mortality had declined dramatically to 4%, a reduction of 84%, and the TFR declined to 3.2. By 2018, child mortality had declined further to 0.6% and the TFR declined to 1.9, below replacement level.
| World historical TFR (1950–2020) | |||
| Years | Global Average | More developed regions | Less developed regions |
| 1950–1955 | 4.86 | 2.84 | 5.94 |
| 1955–1960 | 5.01 | 2.75 | 6.15 |
| 1960–1965 | 4.70 | 2.71 | 5.64 |
| 1965–1970 | 5.08 | 2.51 | 6.23 |
| 1970–1975 | 4.83 | 2.32 | 5.87 |
| 1975–1980 | 4.08 | 2.01 | 4.88 |
| 1980–1985 | 3.75 | 1.89 | 4.40 |
| 1985–1990 | 3.52 | 1.82 | 4.03 |
| 1990–1995 | 3.31 | 1.78 | 3.71 |
| 1995–2000 | 2.88 | 1.58 | 3.18 |
| 2000–2005 | 2.73 | 1.57 | 2.98 |
| 2005–2010 | 2.62 | 1.61 | 2.81 |
| 2010–2015 | 2.59 | 1.69 | 2.74 |
| 2015–2020 | 2.52 | 1.67 | 2.66 |
| 2020–2025 | 2.35 | 1.51 | 2.47 |
The chart shows that the decline in the TFR since the 1960s has occurred in every region of the world. The global TFR is projected to continue declining for the remainder of the century, and reach a below-replacement level of 1.8 by 2100.
In 2022, the global TFR was 2.3. Because the global fertility replacement rate for 2010–2015 was estimated to be 2.3, humanity has achieved or is approaching a significant milestone where the global fertility rate is equal to the global replacement rate.
The global fertility rate may have fallen below the global replacement level of 2.2 children per woman as early as 2023. Numerous developing countries have experienced an accelerated fertility decline in the 2010s and early 2020s. The average fertility rate in countries such as Thailand or Chile approached the mark of one child per woman, which triggered concerns about the rapid aging of populations worldwide.
| + !Region !TFR (2015–2020) | |
| Africa | 4.4 |
| Asia | 2.2 |
| Europe | 1.6 |
| Latin America and the Caribbean | 2.0 |
| Northern America | 1.8 |
| Oceania | 2.4 |
In 2013, the TFR of Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Northern America were below the global replacement-level fertility rate of 2.1 children per female.
The poverty of Africa, and the high maternal death and infant mortality had led to calls from WHO for family planning, and the encouragement of smaller families.
In the past 20 years, South Korea has recorded some of the lowest fertility and marriage levels in the world. As of 2022, South Korea is the country with the world's lowest total fertility rate, at 0.78. In 2022, the TFR of the capital Seoul was 0.57.
In 2021, the United Kingdom had a TFR of 1.53. In 2021 estimates for the non-EU European post-Soviet states group, Russia had a TFR of 1.60, Moldova 1.59, Ukraine 1.57, and Belarus 1.52.
Emigration of young adults from Eastern Europe to the West aggravates the demographic problems of those countries. People from countries such as Bulgaria, Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine are particularly moving abroad.
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