Fertility rates — which measure the average number of children per woman — have been falling worldwide. Since 1950, global fertility rates have halved, from almost 5 children per woman to 2.2.
As a result, global population growth has slowed dramatically, and many countries' populations are expected to decline by the end of the century.
This is because fertility rates in many countries have fallen below the “replacement level”. This is the level at which a population replaces itself from one generation to the next. It’s generally defined as a rate of 2.1 children per woman.
The map shows which countries had fertility rates above and below this level in 2025. This is based on projections from the UN World Population Prospects.
by ourworldindata
4 Comments
**Data source:** [UN World Population Prospects](https://population.un.org/wpp/downloads)
**Tools used:** initial plotting with OWID-Grapher; finishing in Figma
Why don’t we just move people from the aquamarine areas to the orange areas? Are they stupid?
Poor billionaires, where will they get their workers from?!
Nothing is going to get fixed until they stop calling it fertility rates (fair enough when there was no reliabke contraception) and start calling it birth rate. When we could choose how many children to have, we finally learned that less was more.