Executive Summary

Plummeting fertility rates in southern Europe have led governments across the region to begin considering pronatal policy.¹ Italian Prime Minister Meloni recently spoke alongside Pope Francis about the importance of boosting Italian fertility,² Spain’s fertility rate is at record lows, and even tiny Malta’s Parliament has called low birth rates an “existential challenge.”³ Most recently, France—which, as this report discusses, has historically experienced high birth rates—has begun to see declining fertility, leading French Premier Emmanuel Macron to call for “demographic rearmament.”⁴ 

This report undertakes the task of assessing where fertility in southern Europe is headed, what factors are driving its decline, and whether anything can be done. In brief, we find that there are reasons for hope: pronatalism has worked where it has been seriously undertaken, and sources of demographic underperformance are readily identifiable in many countries.

That said, in this report, we do not attempt to provide a blueprint for pronatal policy, for the simple reason that no such blueprint will look the same in any two countries. Despite some broad similarities, the challenges facing Spain are not the same as those facing Italy, and similar headline fertility rates often mask quite large underlying differences. Policies implemented in one context cannot be expected to have the same effects in other contexts, where underlying economic structures and cultural norms may be different.

Key Findings:

• Fertility rates within marriage remain fairly high in much of southern Europe, and only Spain has seen a major decline in married fertility in the last 40 years. However, marriage rates have fallen sharply in all countries. As a result, most of the decline in fertility can be directly attributed to decreasing exposure to marriage.
• Differences in nonmarital fertility alone do not account for cross-national differences in overall fertility: high fertility societies have high rates of childbearing within marriage.
• Fertility differences around Europe are not primarily due to differences in prevalence or sources of immigration, but rather to differences among native-born women in each country. For example, high immigration is not the source of France’s high fertility.
• Desired family size is relatively low in southern Europe, perhaps due to adverse economic conditions leading young people to reduce their family ambitions. Examples of adverse economic conditions could include extended coresidence with parents, lack of independent household formation by young men, and low prevalence of stable, formal employment for young adults.
• France’s pronatal policies undertaken between 1920 and 1950, and expanded in subsequent decades, have caused French fertility to remain durably elevated (0.1 to 0.3 more children per woman) throughout the last century. This has led to France’s population being several million people higher today than it otherwise would have been.
• Because the exact dynamics of marriage, housing, and work vary considerably across countries, the best path forward for governments interested in pronatal policy is a harmonized multinational data collection effort entirely focused on assessing factors shaping fertility and marriage, similar to the country-specific surveys fielded in Spain and Portugal in the late 2010s.

 

The Problem

In recent years, fertility rates in much of southern Europe have fallen to extraordinarily low levels: 1.4 children per  woman in Portugal, 1.33 in Greece, 1.24 in Italy, 1.16 in Spain, 1.1 in Malta, and a shockingly low 0.97 in Andorra. Even French fertility, relatively higher at 1.7 children per woman, is now falling, leading French Premier Emmanuel Macron to call for new policies to stimulate “demographic rearmament.” Although the extremely low birth rates of Korea, Japan, or other east Asian countries are widely remarked upon, the similarly low birth rates of much of southern Europe are less well known and understood. 

In recent years, fertility rates in much of southern Europe have fallen to extraordinarily low levels: 1.4 children per  woman in Portugal, 1.33 in Greece, 1.24 in Italy, 1.16 in Spain, 1.1 in Malta, and a shockingly low 0.97 in Andorra. Even French fertility, relatively higher at 1.7 children per woman, is now falling, leading French Premier Emmanuel Macron to call for new policies to stimulate “demographic rearmament.” Although the extremely low birth rates of Korea, Japan, or other east Asian countries are widely remarked upon, the similarly low birth rates of much of southern Europe are less well known and understood. 

Low birth rates may create many societal problems—troubled finances for social insurance programs, increasing elder-care demands for young people, reduced innovation and entrepreneurship, shifts in demographic and thus geopolitical balances, and the rise of family disappointment across society. There are many reasons policymakers may be concerned about low fertility, and this report is not primarily concerned with exploring those possible problems. Rather, this report is primarily concerned with a diagnostic question: why is fertility low in southern Europe, and is there anything that can be done to boost it?

To begin, we look at France, one of the great exception cases for low fertility in southwestern Europe. France’s unique demographic history is an important starting point because it clarifies the importance of supportive family policy for boosting birth rates above the current lowest-low levels observed in other countries.

To begin, we look at France, one of the great exception cases for low fertility in southwestern Europe. France’s unique demographic history is an important starting point because it clarifies the importance of supportive family policy for boosting birth rates above the current lowest-low levels observed in other countries.

Data and Methods

This report uses data from numerous sources. Where possible, statistics on birth rates and completed fertility from the Human Fertility Database were utilized. Where not available, we relied upon data from national vital statistics offices. In many cases, census data was most readily computed using the IPUMS International database. Regardless, all data in this report comes from one of three underlying data-generating processes: vital statistics registers, censuses, or social surveys. Social surveys are mostly used for discussions of fertility preferences; the vast majority of the data in this report comes from vital statistics registers and censuses. Because each figure uses variable data sources, more detailed data and method notes are provided with each figure.

Throughout the report, colors used in figures for countries in southern Europe will be kept consistent: France will always be blue, Portugal green, Italy orange, Spain red, etc. In figures where southwestern European countries are compared to countries in other regions, the countries of key interest may be color-coded by these standard colors to make them easier to spot.

 

The Example of France

France has a long history of family policies intended to shape fertility. In 1666, concerns about low birth rates motivated King Louis XIV to offer tax exemptions for fathers with 10 or more children, although these were repealed in the 1680s after they became a source of tax fraud and abuse. But as French fertility fell in the 1700s, pronatal subsidies were reinstituted from 1760-1789, just on the eve of revolution.⁵ There is not much evidence that either of these policies succeeded; indeed, French birth rates fell precipitously from the 1720s until the early 1800s, driven by the rising tide of secularism sweeping the country in the 18th century. This decline is evident in Figure 1 and is not replicated in mid-18th-century Spain, Portugal, or Italy.⁶

France’s geographic proximity to the southern European countries, shared Catholic history, and Romance linguistic  background all make it a reasonable starting point for comparison. Reaching back 4,000 years or more, France shares with Italy and Spain a historic linkage to the archaeological “Bell Beaker” culture rather than the contemporary “Corded Ware” culture of northern Europe, and so can reasonably be compared to the countries of southern Europe.⁷  Moreover, France’s high fertility rates, specifically among native-born French women, driven by both higher marital and nonmarital fertility, have led French women to experience relatively stable rates of family formation amid sharp declines in other countries. All of this makes France a uniquely interesting comparison. What is it about France that has led to higher fertility rates?

To begin with, it is worth emphasizing the stark differences in fertility between France and its immediate neighbors. By comparing fertility on either side of the French border in regions where various cultural-linguistic groups straddle both sides of that border, it is possible to gain greater confidence that something about the legal and policy environment in France may influence fertility. In particular, Figure 2 compares fertility rates in NUTS-3 regions (similar to U.S. counties in geographic size) on France’s southern borders.

French Corsica has higher fertility than Italian Sardinia; the French side of the Franco-Italian border has sharply higher fertility, as does the French side of the Franco-Spanish or even Franco-Andorran border. These discontinuities 
could have longstanding cultural or historical explanations, but in some cases, the argument for a policy explanation is compelling. For example, Basque-speakers form a meaningful cultural minority (and sometimes local majority) on both sides of the western edge of the Franco-Spanish border, and yet there’s still a large fertility difference. In that case, there are strong cultural similarities on both sides of the border, yet the French side has noticeably higher fertility.

Nor do these contemporary fertility differences arise from deep historic roots. Using data from the Princeton European Fertility Project, fertility in the 1880s can be compared in these same border regions, as in Figure 3. This period is chosen as it came after industrialization had commenced in all relevant regions, but before any of these countries had implemented generous welfare states; thus, it is the most plausible benchmark period for assessing deeper historic roots of higher fertility.

In the 1880s, fertility was considerably lower on the French side of the Franco-Spanish border than the Spanish side. Likewise, French border regions had lower fertility than Italian border regions. Comparing the Mediterranean island provinces of each country, French Corsica had higher fertility than the Spanish Balearics, but lower than Italian Sardinia. In other words, before the 20th century, the French side of the border in most cases had lower, not higher, fertility.

The Princeton data can be used to see when the relationship reversed and the French side of the border experienced higher fertility. Comparing the two sides of Basque country as the cleanest comparison, French-side fertility may have first exceeded Spanish-side fertility in the 1930s or 1940s, but as late as the 1970s, fertility rates on either side of the border were fairly similar. In other words, France’s fertility advantage emerges sometime between the 1920s and the 1980s, with exact timing varying somewhat by region and the measure used.

This time period has attracted extensive prior academic research because the 1920s and especially the 1930s saw the French government respond to the population losses of World War I (and their anticipation of a future war with Germany) by launching a concerted pronatal policy campaign.⁸ French policymakers were acutely aware of the fact that France’s demographic heft within Europe, and especially relative to Germany, had declined throughout the modern period, and World War I threw that decline into sharp relief. As a result, France adopted a wide range of pronatal policies, which have been expanded over time. 

Prior academic research has found that these pronatal financial benefits, which began to be rolled out in the 1920s and especially 1930s, may have increased French fertility by as much as 0.3 children per woman.⁹ The most famous of these policies is the French tax quotient system, wherein tax brackets and benefits approximately multiply with family size, providing extremely large benefits for having kids, especially for higher earners. Historic “bachelor taxes” have also been shown to be important. The approximately 0.3 child increase in fertility attributed to these policies by academic research is similar in size to the modern cross-border 0.1-0.3 child difference between France and Spain or Italy shown in Figure 2. In other words, the observed cross-border difference in fertility in France emerged over the course of the 20th century, a period where prior academic research has shown that explicit pronatal policies had a large role in shaping French fertility behaviors. Because these policies benefited married and unmarried women alike, they may account for France’s higher fertility both within and outside of marriage, which will be discussed in much greater detail in a subsequent section of this report. Thus, France is a clear case in which nearly a century of consistent pronatal policy has yielded durably higher fertility, on a scale which has dramatically reshaped French demography. 

France and Spain’s family policies reflect distinct approaches to supporting families. France emphasizes universal support for parents, viewing children as a social investment and offering a range of benefits and programs to alleviate the cost of child-rearing. In contrast, Spain’s family policies have traditionally been more targeted either just to dependents of male breadwinners, or to the economically needy, with recent efforts to provide broader support still lagging France in terms of comprehensiveness, generosity, and flexibility. The differences in policy reflect broader societal values and priorities regarding family and child care, with France’s policies more forthrightly pronatal (rather than anti-poverty or promoting traditional gender roles), and thus offering greater agency and choice to parents in managing work and family life.

The diversity and universality of the support parents receive to subsidize early care reflect a social value placed on child rearing. After 1990, French parents who hired private care for children were exempt from social security contributions for the contract. After 2003, birth and early childhood benefits in France were expanded and unified, establishing what is known as the “Prestation d’accueil du jeune enfant” or PAJE. Under this program, there are four key policies: a means-tested one-time birth/adoption grant, a monthly means-tested stipend for needy families, paid parental leave PreParE (open to all but adjusted based on income) for parents who wish to care for children under three years of age, and finally, a supplement for free choice of child care, CMG, also open to all but income adjusted to offset child care costs for families hiring professional workers, or to use at small day care centers. This is all in addition to the quotient system, which is most generous for higher-earning households. While Spain provides means-tested, one-time birth grants and monthly stipends for the extremely economically disadvantaged, there are nopolicies in place comparable to PreParE and CMG, or especially the quotient system. In Spain, workers with young children have little agency when combining paid work with child care in the early years. Public nurseries have limited seats, parental leave is unpaid, and there are no subsidies for private child care or professional childminders. Unlike the French case, parents’ options are more limited, especially for middle-class families who are ineligible for means-tested cash-allowances and who face higher tax burdens.

As a result of these policies, the long-run strategic goals of French policymakers in the 1920s have in fact begun to reap results. After long stability at around 16-19% of Europe’s population around and before 1700 AD, France’s share of the European population fell to just over 7% by the 1940s and early 1950s. The ratio of French-to-German population fell from 1.5 around 1800, to just 0.56 in 1943. But since then, France has risen back to account for almost 9% of the European population today, and its population is now equal to 77% of Germany’s. Fueled partly by immigration, but also by France’s above-average fertility for a European country, century-old French ambitions of reclaiming the country’s place as the demographic center of Western Europe are well underway, and headed in the direction French policymakers of a century ago would have liked to see. This is an extraordinarily well-documented case of pronatalism implemented for a specific policy goal. While it has taken time to bear fruit in France, pronatal policy is clearly working.

Key Point: Today, France has unusually high fertility compared to its southern neighbors. This was not always the case: before World War I, France had markedly lower birth rates. Today, France’s higher fertility is a product of a consistently pronatal policy environment since the 1930s. This can be seen in cross-border data and in rigorously controlled academic studies. Thus, at least in the French case, pronatalism can work. As a result, there are several million extra French residents thanks to pronatal policies in force between 1920 and 2024.

There are several million extra French residents thanks to pronatal policies in force between 1920 and 2024

 

Understanding Past Fertility Trends

Since 1980, fertility rates in southwestern Europe have followed a unique trend in different countries, but in every country shown other than France, fertility rates are now at or below 1.5 children per woman. In Andorra, birth rates are below one child per woman. For every country, birth rates declined between 1980 and the mid-1990s. Since then, birth rates rose for many countries, at least through the late-2000s. But since 2010, fertility rates have fallen for most countries, Portugal and Slovenia notably excepted.

Today, southwestern Europe is a region of overwhelmingly low fertility rates, though within that general low level, there is considerable heterogeneity.

Yet these figures refer only to what is known as “period fertility,” meaning the current fertility rates of currently reproductive-age women. These rates can be highly volatile and even biased if the normative timing of fertility is changing.¹¹ Because fertility in most of these countries has shifted later in life even as people continue to desire children, these estimates are likely to be biased. It’s also possible to estimate a modified measure of period fertility, which corrects for this timing bias, estimating fertility rates with controls for the timing of births of each live birth order.12 This measure estimates how many children women are likely to have if current birth rates are stable over the course of their life, but also accounts for ongoing changes in the timing of births and the pace at which women proceed on to each subsequent birth.

Because adjusted fertility rates are more data-intensive to calculate, they are available for fewer countries and years. In fact, this adjusted fertility measure has never before been calculated for France due to data constraints; we use large sample surveys from 1975 to 2011 and detailed vital statistics data from 1998 to 2021 to estimate it for the first time. The full data is available in the appendix, but the key takeaway is simple: most of the fertility “rebounds” since the mid-1990s in Figure 4 are illusions. Women did not actually shift towards having bigger families, they just shifted the timing of when they started having children. The one notable exception is, as usual, France: France’s tempo- and parity-adjusted fertility rate rose from a low ebb of 1.83 in 2003, to 1.96 in 2012, the last year for which we can calculate it.

Finally, instead of using period indicators, fertility can be measured using cohort indicators, that is, measures of actual lifetime fertility for women now ending their reproductive years. These indicators are not informative about very recent fertility trends, but they can provide useful information about historic trends. Figure 5 below shows completed fertility for women who were in their mid-40s, arranged by the year those women turned 25 (i.e. when they were approximately around peak childbearing years).

The general impression of Figure 5 reaffirms the notion that only France saw a real fertility rebound after the 1990s. French fertility has become persistently higher than fertility in the other countries, while Spain’s fertility has plummeted to striking lows, along with Italy’s.¹³

Key Point: Fertility is dropping rapidly in much of southern Europe, and this is likely to yield smaller completed family sizes for women in childbearing years right now. This sharp collapse in fertility rates implies that each subsequent generation born in Spain, Italy, or Portugal, as well as smaller countries in southern Europe, is 30%, 40%, or even 50% or more smaller than the prior generation. France has managed to avoid this sharp decline so far.

Marriage and Fertility

Demographers have long recognized that marriage is a key element in the fertility process, and recent research has confirmed the continuing importance of marriage in shaping fertility outcomes even in modern, Western contexts where nonmarital childbearing is common.¹⁴ This conclusion is often counterintuitive to modern policymakers, steeped as they are in the notion that nonmarital childbearing is now a widespread social phenomenon. This report section will untangle these threads and outline how it can be that marriage remains a decisive factor shaping fertility, even as nonmarital fertility has grown in prevalence. In turn, it will point to the vital role of marriage-related policies in shaping fertility trajectories.

In every country of southern Europe, births to unmarried women have risen as a share of all births, as shown in Figure 6. This has led many commentators to suppose that marriage and fertility have become untethered; yet nothing could be further from the truth. Around the world, marital status remains highly predictive of fertility.¹⁵ Nor is it the case that low fertility is necessarily a product of social stigma against nonmarital births: while high-fertility France has many nonmarital births, low-fertility Portugal has similar rates of births out of wedlock; and the lowest-fertility country in the region, Andorra, is middle-of-the-pack when it comes to the share of births to unmarried mothers. Higher-fertility countries don’t achieve that fertility simply via nonmarital births, and lower-fertility countries don’t have low fertility simply because of some constraint on nonmarital births.

To understand this dynamic, it’s helpful to separate the rise of nonmarital births into two underlying driving forces: first, the nonmarital birth rate (that is, the probability that an unmarried woman of a given age will have a child), and second, the prevalence of marriage (that is, the probability that a woman of a given age will be married or unmarried). 

Many policymakers observe rising nonmarital births as a share of births and assume that the nonmarital birth rate is rising, without considering the influence of the prevalence of marriage itself.

As we show below, more births are occurring to unmarried women not only because nonmarital birth rates have risen (and they have risen somewhat over the last few decades), but also—and perhaps primarily—because rising marriage ages have led to a dramatic increase in the number of reproductive-age unmarried women in most societies, as shown in Figure 7.

Whereas in the 1980s, considerable majorities of women ages 20 to 40 were married in all the large countries of southwest Europe, about a third or less of this age group is married today. Even if nonmarital birth rates had been totally unchanged (that is, if the age-specific rates at which unmarried women had children had been stable over time), the number of births to unmarried mothers would have about doubled, while the number of births to married mothers would have fallen sharply. Thus, even if married women have vastly higher fertility rates, a mere compositional change in marital status can drive a huge increase in nonmarital births alongside a sharp decline in society-wide fertility. Data on fertility by marital status strongly confirms the ongoing importance of marriage for fertility. Figures 8a and 8b show fertility rates for married and unmarried women in Spain, Italy, Portugal, and France. These rates are constructed by taking the number of births to women of a given age and marital status and dividing it by the number of women of that age and status, then summing these age-and-status-specific rates across all ages for a given status. Because women enter and exit various marital statuses over the life course, these figures represent abstract indicators of status-specific fertility rates, not true predictions or measures of actual completed family size by marital status.

In all four countries, women of a given age are vastly more likely to have children when they are married. The ratio is lowest in France (3.96 for married women and 1.54 for unmarried, a ratio of 2.6) and highest in Italy (marital fertility is almost six times nonmarital fertility), but in every case, married women are far more likely to have children.

These marital fertility rates, of course, are also not fixed over time. From 1980 to the early 2000s, marital fertility fell sharply in both Spain and Portugal, while remaining stable in France and possibly Italy as well. But since the early 2000s, marital fertility has actually risen by a large amount in Portugal, while it has been generally stable in the other three countries. Figure 9 shows non-marital fertility indices: they have generally risen over time but remain far lower than marital fertility indices. 

For Portugal, Spain, and France, the ratio of marital to nonmarital fertility has stabilized around three: women of a given age are about three times as likely to have a child as unmarried women of the same age. In Italy, this ratio has stabilized around six. On the whole, this suggests that Italy’s nonmarital fertility may be unusually low compared to its marital fertility; but for the other countries, there is no reason to imagine nonmarital fertility can serve as a major source of higher fertility. That’s because nonmarital fertility is already quite high compared to marital fertility.

Accounting for the actual years that women in each of these countries spend in married unions, Figure 9 shows the number of children that women in each country can expect to have within and outside of married unions.

In France, the average woman will have one child outside of a married relationship, and 0.7 children inside a married relationship. France’s very high nonmarital fertility rates are striking, but it should also be noted that French women have more children within marriage than Portuguese or Spanish women (though not Italian women). French women have higher fertility than women in much of southern Europe regardless of marital status, and so France’s higher fertility cannot be attributed simply to higher nonmarital births. In other words, even if Spain or Portugal had the same environment for, and low stigmas around, nonmarital fertility as France, both countries would still have appreciably lower fertility.

Furthermore, the dynamics of low fertility vary considerably between Spain, Italy, and Portugal. A useful exercise is to calculate hypothetical fertility rates if every married couple in each of these countries were experiencing natural fertility for their age, meaning, birth odds consistent with frequent intercourse, short breastfeeding duration, and no use of contraceptives. In general, if a woman experiences these coupling behaviors throughout her whole life, she will tend to have approximately 8 to 14 children, on average. Figure 10 compares actual births in married unions (taken from Figure 9) to what births in married unions would have been if the country’s marital prevalence was unchanged but marital fertility rates rose to the age-specific rates implied by natural fertility.

As can be seen, even if every married woman in France, Portugal, Italy, or Spain bore children at the “natural” fertility rate for a woman of her age, marriage rates are nonetheless so low that overall fertility from married couples would remain below 1.7 children per woman in every country. Differences in marital composition alone explain approximately 75% of the gap between pre-modern natural fertility rates and observed fertility rates. Among married couples in each country, their fertility relative to natural fertility varies: Spanish married women have unusually low fertility within marriage, while Italian and French women have fairly high fertility within marriage.

Thus, it is effectively impossible for any of these countries to boost their birth rates over 2 children per woman simply by getting married women to have more children. As discussed above, it is also unlikely that unmarried fertility can durably make up gaps. Rather, to boost fertility in the long run, the share of women who are married at any given age must increase.

Nor is the effect of marriage diminished if cohort data is used instead of period data. At the end of their reproductive years, ever-married women have had far more children than never-married women in every country in Europe, according to data from the European Values Survey.¹⁶ In Portugal and Slovenia, ever-married women have 0.6 children more than never-married women; in France, 1 more; in Italy, 1.4; in Spain, 1.6; in Switzerland, 1.7; in Malta, 2.2.¹⁷ Data from a large Spanish fertility survey conducted in 2018 confirm the impression of a large gap: never-married women in that survey had only 0.5 children on average by their late-40s, while ever-married women had 1.6 children.¹⁸

 

At the end of their reproductive years, evermarried women have had far more children than never-married women in every country in Europe.

Key Point: Throughout southwestern Europe, marriage remains vitally important for fertility. Married women have more children overall, and women are likelier to have children in years in which they are married. The vast majority of long-run fertility decline is compositionally accounted for by declining marriage rates, and, likewise, much of the rise in nonmarital fertility is simply related to the growing number of unmarried women of reproductive age, not necessarily a rising propensity for those women to have children outside of marriage. There is considerable cross-country variation in the relationship between marriage and fertility: French women have higher marital and nonmarital fertility than other women, while Italian women have high marital fertility but low nonmarital fertility. Spanish women, on the other hand, have strikingly low marital and nonmarital fertility. Thus, the life-history sources of low fertility vary widely across southwestern Europe, and higher fertility in France arises from multiple different sources. Moreover, although France’s nonmarital fertility rate is higher than most other countries, its share of children born without a legally registered father is not unusually high, suggesting that France’s high fertility does not, in fact, come paired with unusually high rates of absentee fathers.

Attitudes Towards Fertility

Besides union status and coupling behavior, another key element of family formation can be measured using survey data on attitudes towards fertility, or fertility preferences. Surveys of fertility preferences ask respondents questions about their desired, intended, wanted, wished for, or ideal ultimate family sizes. These questions do not all produce identical responses, as will be shown in Figure 11. France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal have all had unique surveys conducted in different years measuring fertility preferences in specific ways. The only recent harmonized survey across all four countries was the 2011 Eurobarometer survey. Recent detailed fertility surveys have been conducted in Spain (2018) and Portugal (2019), but in Italy and France, very little data is available since the early 2010s. Nonetheless, even the sporadic available data makes clear that women in France have generally desired larger families than women in Spain, Italy, or Portugal in recent years. 

Since 2000, the lowest fertility preference reported by French women was intended fertility in 2013, at 2.03 children per woman. But since 2000, there are numerous surveys yielding fertility preferences below 2 children per woman in other countries: Spanish women in 2018 reported only desiring 1.96 children, Italian women in 2011 desired only 1.95 and intended just 1.55. Portuguese women’s intentions were below 2 in 2011, 2013, and 2019, as were Spanish women’s intentions in 2011. Thus, a core part of the French difference is not simply a difference in fertility realizations but fertility goals. French women want bigger families than their southern neighbors. 

French women not only want more children, but they have more children. In fact, the gap between their wants and their outcomes are smaller than for women in the other three countries. In 2011, the gap between what reproductive-age French women said was their personal ideal family size and their actual total fertility rate was 0.3 children; but in Italy the gap was 0.5, in Portugal 0.6, and in Spain 0.7, as shown in Figure 12. 

France’s gap is about 0.2 to 0.4 children smaller than the gap observed in Spain, Portugal, or Italy. This is about the same size as the 0.1 to 0.3 child increase this report previously attributed to France’s pronatal policies. Thus, it is plausible that the reason French women’s fertility more closely approximates their desires is that the French policy environment is more supportive of family formation.

In all four countries, women’s “general ideals” (what they said was best for a family in the abstract) closely mirrored their “personal ideals” (what they said was best for them personally), and both measures of ideals tended to exceed intentions. Intentions, in turn, generally exceeded actual fertility outcomes, whether measured by TFR in 2011, or the ultimate completed fertility of women who were 34 in 2011 (the youngest group for which completed fertility can be approximated). By far, French women had the smallest gap between personal desires and fertility outcomes, 
though Italian women had very small gaps between intentions and outcomes due to the large gap between what Italian women report wanting and what they, in fact, deem realistically achievable. In Spain on the other hand, there is a sharp gap between intentions and outcomes, suggesting many Spanish women are not only failing to achieve their fertility desires but also are facing recurrent negative surprises in terms of their inability to achieve even their more reasonable intentions. 

Why do French women desire more children? One answer may be France’s unique pronatal policy environment: strong social support for childbearing may lead young people to adopt more optimistic views of their family futures, a factor discussed at great length in a later section of this report. Another could be the more favorable environment for coupling discussed above, or the better housing environment discussed below.

Key Point:Women in Spain, Italy, and Portugal appear to desire and intend smaller families than women in France, establishing an upper limit on what pronatal policy could achieve in the short run. However, low fertility desires may in some part be related to major structural differences in housing and extended family dynamics. While parents of small children benefit from grandparental help with kids, in general, young people who reside with their parents or are otherwise unable to form independent households are less likely to marry, desire fewer children, and have fewer children. 

Conclusion

Fertility in Portugal, Spain, and Italy (as well as Andorra, Malta, and other countries in the area) is at very low levels, which is giving rise to rapidly shrinking family sizes throughout southwestern Europe. These low levels arise largely from low marriage rates: even if married women had children near the maximum biologically possible rates, fertility would still be below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman, given how late and rare marriage has become. Marriage and fertility behaviors are jointly influenced by low fertility preferences and varying country-level economic and housing conditions. But throughout the region, women are spending fewer of their reproductive years in a stable, mutually supportive, legally protected union of the sort that could create the prospective confidence and security necessary to motivate childbearing.

However, even among married couples, fertility rates have fallen over the last few decades in much of southern Europe. A key factor shaping low fertility in Spain, Portugal, and Italy is the generally low desired family size in the region: women in southern Europe not only face obstacles to having children, they also simply desire fewer children than their 
more northerly peers.

By comparing Spain, Portugal, and Italy to France, a country with comparatively high fertility, several factors stand out.

1. French fertility rose above its southern neighbors in the period in which France adopted a systematic pronatal policy with generous financial transfers, especially via France’s tax structure that greatly favors marriage and family formation.
2. The scale of the fertility gap between France and its neighbors is similar to the estimated effect size 
3. French fertility is higher for both married and unmarried women, and is connected to higher fertility 
   desires, and is not driven by fertility among immigrants. 
4. French women are far more likely to live independently, apart from their parents, than women in Spain, Portugal, or Italy.

But while France’s uniquely pronatal policy environment and more successful housing institutions may increase its birth rates, this line of reasoning does not produce a direct blueprint for successful pronatal policy in southern Europe. France’s example shows that pronatal policies can work, but it does not therefore follow that France’s exact policies can be transplanted to Spain or Italy or elsewhere, not least because policies implemented after major fertility declines may not be as effective as those implemented before such declines.23 Moreover, there may be important links to other factors not classically considered to be part of family policy. Perhaps France’s pronatal incentives worked because France managed housing supply better than its neighbors, so that families could spend more on having children and less on housing than their counterparts. The same policies applied to a society with a different housing or labor market might not yield identical outcomes. This report has discussed some major fertility drivers but has not explored others, most notably the structure of labor markets in southern Europe, which prior research suggests may also be important.²⁴

Each country’s fertility environment is meaningfully different, and the barriers facing women that shape their fertility preferences and behavior may vary as well. Portugal and Spain have recently conducted large, but non-standardized, fertility surveys; France and Italy have not, to say nothing of the smaller countries in the region like Andorra, Malta, Cyprus, or Greece. In order to develop effective policies to facilitate higher fertility, policymakers throughout southern Europe need a harmonized, large-sample-size fertility survey program conducted across the region to compare and contrast various factors influencing fertility. While governments undoubtedly would prefer to hear that there is some policy that can be enacted tomorrow to reliably increase birth rates, this is simply not the case. Only once better data is available to identify the unique factors influencing fertility around southern Europe can governments effectively respond, addressing the various needs families have with respect to child care, housing, union stability, work, finances, and other domains.

 

About the Authors
Lyman Stone is a research fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, the director of research of the consulting firm Demographic Intelligence, and a PhD candidate at McGill University. His work has been covered in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Vox, and The Federalist, as well as numerous local outlets. He formerly worked as an international economist for USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service.

Erin Wingerter is a researcher at the Institute for Culture and Society at the University of Navarra. She has worked in higher education creating and fostering strategic institutional partnerships and mentoring students on career outcomes and international exchange. Her research explores the intersection of career aspirations and family priorities, fertility, and parenthood.

 

Appendix

1 In this report, “pronatal policy” or “pronatalism” refers to efforts by governments to increase birth rates.

2 Nicole Winfield and Paonlo Santa Lucia, “Pope joins Meloni is urging Italians to have more kids, not pets,” Associated Press, 5/12/23.

3“Maltese Parliament and Malta Employers’ Association publish book about Malta’s low birth rate,” The Malta Independent, 2/5/24.

4 Solene Cordier, “’Demographic rearmament’: Macron plans to reform parental leave and fight infertility,” Le Monde, 1/17/24.

5 L. Tuttle, Conceiving the Old Regime: Pronatalism and the Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern France. Oxford University Press, 2010.

6 G. Blanc, “The Cultural Origins of the Demographic Transition in France,” SSRN, 1/29/24.

7 These two archaeological cultures approximately correspond to different degrees of historic exposure to a major migration event from the Eurasian steppe on the cusp of the Bronze Age which radically altered the culture and genetics of the region. Even more approximately, the more westerly “Bell Beaker” culture can be approximately associated with Y-chromosomal haplogroup R1b, while the more easterly “Corded Ware” culture is more associated with Y-chromosomal haplogroup R1a. Details can be found in McColl et al (2024), “Steppe Ancestry in western Eurasia and the spread of the Germanic Languages.” bioRxiv preprint. This historic detail is shared only to emphasize that France shares with Spain, Portugal, and Italy quite deep historic and cultural roots that make it a reasonable point of comparison.

8 Marie Monique-Huss, “Pronatalism in the interwar period in France,” Journal of Contemporary History 25 (1990): 39-68. Also: Elisa Camiscioli, “Producing 
citizens, reproducing the French race: immigration, demography, and pronatalism in 20th-century France,” Gender & History 13, no. 3 (Nov. 2001): 593-621. Also: 
Andreas Horacio Reggiani, “Procreating France: the politics of demography, 1919-1945,” French Historical Studies 19, no. 3 (spring 1996): 725-754.

9 Daniel L. Chen, “Can countries reverse fertility decline? Evidence from France’s marriage and baby bonuses, 1929-1981,” International Tax and Public Finance 18 
(2011): 243-271. Also: Guy Laroque, “Does fertility respond to financial incentives?” CESifo Working Paper Series No. 2339, SSRN, June 2008.

10 Sabrina Volant, et al., “French fertility is the highest in Europe: Because of its immigrants?” Population & Societies 568, no. 7 (2019): 1-4. Also: Hill Kulu, et al., 
“A comparative study on fertility among descendants of immigrants in Europe,” Families and Societies Working Paper Series 40 (2015).

11 John Bongaarts and Griffith Feeney, “On the quantam and tempo of fertility,” Population and Development Review 24, no. 2 ( June 1998): 271-291. 
12 John Bongaarts, “A demographic explanation for the recent rise in European fertility,” Population and Development Review 38, no. 1 (March 2012): 83-120. 

13 Appendix Figures 1a, b, c, and d show the total fertility rate, tempo- and parity-adjusted fertility rate, and cohort completed fertility (arranged by years a cohort 
turned 25) for Spain, Italy, Portugal, and France, for easy comparison of these values, while Appendix Figure 2 shows tempo- and parity-adjusted fertility rates for a 
range of southwestern European countries.

14 Lyman Stone and Spencer James, Marriage Still Matters: Demonstrating the link between marriage and fertility in the 21st Century, Institute for Family Studies, 
2022. 

15 Ibid.

16 Op. Cit., Stone and James, IFS. 

17 Ibid. 

18 Instituto National de Estadistica, “Fertility Survey: Year 2018. Final Data,” Press Release, 4/19/19.

19 Sarah Brauner-Otto, “Housing and fertility: a macro-level, multi-country investigation, 1993-2017,” Housing Studies 38, no. 4 (2023): 569-596. Also: Kristin 
Makszin and Dorothy Bohle, “Housing as a fertility trap: the inability of states, markets, or families to provide adequate housing in East Central Europe,” East 
European Politics and Societies 34, no 4 (2020). Also: Clara Mulder and Francesco Billari, “Home ownership regimes and low fertility,” Housing Studies 25, no 4 
(2010): 527-541; Also: Daniele Vignoli, et al., “A home to plan the first child? Fertility intentions and housing conditions in Italy,” Population, Space, and Place
19, no 1 ( Jan/Feb 2013): 60-71. Also: Kadir Atalay, et al., “Housing, wealth, fertility intentions, and fertility,” Journal of Housing Economics 54 (2021). William 
A.V. Clark, et al., Do housing prices affect fertility behavior in China? An empirical examination,” 43, no 5 (2020). Richard Florida et al., “Housing costs, self 
employment, and fertility,” Population, Space, and Place 27, no 3 (April 2021): e2413.

20 Across the five European countries with parental residence data and childbearing history data, women ages 35 to 39 who coresided with a parent had 30-70% 
fewer children than women of the same age who did not coreside with a parent.

21 Bastian Monkediek and Hilde Bras, “Family systems and fertility intentions: exploring the pathways of influence,” European Journal of Population 34, no. 1 (Feb. 
2018): 33-57. 

22 Jose C. Yong, et al., “When social status gets in the way of reproduction in modern settings: An evolutionary mismatch perspective, 2023,” Culture and Evolution, 
April 2023. Also: Rotella, A., Varnum, et al., “Increasing population densities predict decreasing fertility rates over time: A 174-nation investigation.” American 
Psychologist 76, no. 6 (2021): 933–946.

23 T.T. Zhang, et al. “The effect of family fertility support policies on fertility, their contribution, and policy pathways to fertility improvement in OECD countries.” 
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 20, no. 6 (2023). 

24 Mary C. Brinton and Dong-Ju Lee, “Gender role ideology, labor market institutions, and post-industrial fertility,” Population and Development Review 42, no.3 
(Sept. 2016): 405-433.