Higher education The fact that more people are going to colleges and universities, and are working to obtain more post-graduate degrees there, along with the soaring
costs of education, have contributed greatly to postponing
marriage in many cases, and
bearing children at all, or fewer numbers of children, and the fact that the number of women getting higher education has increased has contributed to fewer of them getting married younger, if at all. In the US, for example, females make up more than half of all college students, which is a reversal from a few decades back. The relationship between higher education and childbearing varies by country: for example, in Switzerland by age 40, childlessness among women who had completed
tertiary education is 40%, while in France it is only 15%. In some countries, childlessness has a longer tradition, and was common even before educational levels increased, but in others, such as
Southern European ones, it is a recent phenomenon; for instance in Spain the childlessness rate for women aged 40–44 in 2011 was 21.60%, but historically throughout the 20th century it was around 10%. In the United States in 2022, women between the ages of 15 and 50 with a graduate or professional degree had the highest birthrate (62 births per 1,000 women), whereas women between the ages of 15 and 50 with less than a high school graduate had the lowest birthrate (32 births per 1,000 women) among all levels of educational attainment of the mother.
A general trade-off rates, under age 1, in 2013. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest infant mortality rate, as well as the highest TFR. People are more likely in modern society to invest strongly in the needs of their children, such as offering them the best education, shelter (a room only for the child), travel, cultural activities etc. In the past, when
child mortality was high, people had more children, but invested less in them. Today, parents usually experience much less doubt about whether the child will live to adulthood, and so are more likely to strongly invest in that child. But strongly investing in each child makes it irrational to have a large numbers of children—this is a "quantity vs. quality trade-off"—with education as the most important such qualitative investment.
Economic fluctuation The growth of
wealth and
human development are related to sub-replacement fertility, although a sudden drop in living conditions, such as the
Great Depression, can also lower fertility. In Eastern European countries, the fall of communism was followed by an economic collapse in many of these countries in the 1990s. Some countries, such as those that experienced violent conflicts in the 1990s, were badly affected. Large numbers of people lost their jobs, and massive unemployment, lack of jobs outside the big cities, and economic uncertainty discourages people from having children. For instance, in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, the total fertility rate in 2016 was only 1.28 children born/woman. Financial challenges such as increased
housing prices, concern about
job security, cost of raising children (
child care, education cost) have also impact on TFR.
Urbanization Some consider the increase of
urbanization around the world a central cause. In recent times, residents of urban areas tend to have fewer children than people in rural areas. The need for extra labour from children on farms does not apply to urban-dwellers. Cities tend to have higher property prices, making a large family more expensive, especially in those societies where each child is now expected to have their own bedroom, rather than sharing with siblings as was the case until recently. Rural areas also tend to be more conservative, with less
contraception and
abortion than urban areas.
Reduction in child labour is common in many parts of the world. Countries which have a high fertility rate are usually less-developed countries, where families rely on children to help them, with labour such as
agricultural work, tending to livestock, or even paid work. In such countries
child labour is quite common, with children bringing money home, or directly supporting the family through physical work. By contrast, in high-income nations, child labour is almost universally banned, and it is the parents who are expected to invest extensively into their children.
Views on the "ideal" family Although fertility rates are often discussed in terms of state policies (e.g. financial benefits, combining work with family etc.), the deeply entrenched social views on what constitutes an "ideal" family may play a crucial role: if parents do not envision large families in a positive way, it is difficult to "persuade" them to have many children. In this regard, there are major differences between European countries: while 50.23% of women aged 15–39 state that the "ideal" family has 3 or more children in
Estonia, and 46.43% say this in
Finland; only 11.3% say this in
Czech Republic, and 11.39% in
Bulgaria.
Contraception Changes in
contraception are also an important cause, and one that has seen dramatic changes in the last few generations. Legalization and widespread acceptance of contraception in the developed world is a large factor in decreased fertility levels; however, for instance in a European context where its prevalence has always been very high in the modern era, the fertility rates do not seem to be influenced significantly by availability of contraception. While contraception can reduce the number of unwanted births and contribute to a smaller ideal family size, contraception does not start fertility reductions nor substantially affect their size, with these being attributable to other factors.
Assisted reproductive technology The availability of
assisted reproductive technology (ART) may foster delay of childbearing, because many couples think that it can solve any future fertility problems. Although today Singapore has a low fertility rate, and the government encourages parents to have more children because birth rates have fallen below the replacement rate, in the 1970s the situation was the opposite: the government wished to slow and reverse the boom in births that started after
World War II.
Ability to choose The total fertility rate is also influenced by the ability to choose what type of family to have, if and when to have children, and the number of children to have - free from coercion, pressure, or interference from the community, extended family, state or church. This includes prohibition on practices such as
child marriage,
forced marriage or
bride price. In some cultures for instance, the payment of the bride price creates an obligation on the wife to have children, and failure to do so often results in threats and violence. High-income countries have substantially lower fertility rates, and increased
childlessness, because people who remain childless or who have small families are less likely to be stigmatized. In many cultures childless women suffer discrimination, stigma, ostracism, and social isolation.
Tempo effect , a highly developed country, has low fertility rates and
a rapidly aging population. Total fertility rate (TFR) is affected by a phenomenon called the tempo effect, which describes "distortions due to changes in the timing of births."
John Bongaarts and Griffith Feeney have suggested that this tempo effect is driving the decline of measured fertility rate in the developed world. Specifically, the trend in developed countries of having children at later ages can cause the TFR to be underestimated. For example, as measured by the Human Fertility Database, the United States tempo-adjusted TFR was over a 2.1 replacement level between 1992 and 2015.
Type of partnership A study of the United States and multiple countries in Europe came to the result that women who continue to
cohabit rather than get married after birth have significantly lower probability of having a second child than married women in all countries except those in
Eastern Europe. Another study, on the contrary, came to the result that cohabiting couples in
France have equal fertility as married ones. A large survey in the United States came to the result that married women had an average of 1.9 children, compared to 1.3 among those cohabiting. The corresponding numbers for men were 1.7 and 1.1, respectively. The difference of 0.6 children for both sexes was expected to decrease to between 0.2 and 0.3 over the lifetime when correcting for the
confounder that married people have their children earlier in life. In the United States, those who cohabit without marrying had increased fertility when the male earns considerably more than the female.
Gender expectations and norms Social norms both within the family and in society at large determine fertility levels. The quality of couple relations in terms of support given to the woman matters, with studies on fertility in the high-income world showing a U-shaped relationship between
gender equity within the couple and fertility: in countries with very low fertility rates, the probability of a woman to have the second child occurs at the extremes - either very low gender equality or very high gender equality. This is also reflected at a social level: countries that are neither sufficiently
patriarchal to coerce women into having large families, nor sufficiently egalitarian to incentivize women to have more children through strong support (such as subsidized childcare and good support of working mothers), have very low fertility rates, especially among educated women. Where women are expected to 'choose' between their professional and public life, or having children, the more educated the woman is, the more likely she is to choose the former. The strong emphasis on the domestic role of women in Germany (unlike Scandinavia and France) was described as the cause of the very low fertility in that country. ==Attempts to increase the fertility rate==