About 132 million babies are born in the world each year, and those births are far from evenly spread across countries. In Niger a woman has about 6.1 children on average, while in South Korea it is about 0.7. This article looks at the ten countries with the highest and the lowest fertility among the 70 on the site, and explains why fertility is falling and how that changes the distribution of births around the world. The figures are approximate values taken from UN World Population Prospects 2024 and World Bank data.
What does the fertility rate show?
The fertility rate shows how many children a woman would have on average over her childbearing years if she kept the birth rates of today's age groups. For a population to replace itself without migration, this number needs to be about 2.1. Where child mortality is high the threshold is a little higher, and where it is very low the threshold is close to 2.1. The world average today is about 2.3, just above the threshold. Within that average, though, there are two very different worlds.
The 10 countries with the most children per woman
The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Niger, Somalia and Chad share the same value of about 6.1 and head the list. Mali follows at about 5.7, Nigeria at about 5.1 and Angola at about 5.0. Burkina Faso, Mozambique and Tanzania are level at about 4.6. Of these, the table includes Tanzania and Mozambique, which have the higher number of births per year, and Burkina Faso, with the same value, just misses out. Almost the whole list is made up of sub-Saharan African countries, and the one exception is Afghanistan.
| Country | Children per woman | Births per year, thousands | Urban population, % |
|---|---|---|---|
| DR Congo | about 6.1 | about 4,500 | about 47 |
| Niger | about 6.1 | about 1,200 | about 17 |
| Somalia | about 6.1 | about 750 | about 47 |
| Chad | about 6.1 | about 750 | about 24 |
| Mali | about 5.7 | about 900 | about 46 |
| Nigeria | about 5.1 | about 7,700 | about 54 |
| Angola | about 5 | about 1,400 | about 68 |
| Afghanistan | about 4.8 | about 1,500 | about 27 |
| Tanzania | about 4.6 | about 2,300 | about 37 |
| Mozambique | about 4.6 | about 1,200 | about 38 |
The 10 countries with the fewest children per woman
East Asia and Southern Europe fill the bottom end. South Korea, at about 0.7, has one of the lowest values in the world, with Hong Kong at about 0.8 and Taiwan at about 0.9 alongside it. Ukraine and China are at about 1.0, Spain at about 1.1, and Japan, Poland, Thailand and Italy at about 1.2. In these countries fertility is half the replacement level or less.
| Country | Children per woman | Births per year, thousands | Urban population, % |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Korea | about 0.7 | about 230 | about 81 |
| Hong Kong | about 0.8 | about 33 | about 100 |
| Taiwan | about 0.9 | about 135 | about 80 |
| Ukraine | about 1 | about 200 | about 70 |
| China | about 1 | about 9,000 | about 65 |
| Spain | about 1.1 | about 320 | about 81 |
| Japan | about 1.2 | about 730 | about 92 |
| Poland | about 1.2 | about 270 | about 60 |
| Thailand | about 1.2 | about 520 | about 53 |
| Italy | about 1.2 | about 380 | about 72 |
Why is fertility falling?
There is no single reason. Several linked changes are at work. When child deaths fall, families can settle for fewer children because the risk of losing one is smaller. Girls going to school pushes up the age at marriage and at first birth. Urbanisation raises the cost of bringing up children: a child stops being a pair of hands in the field and becomes a cost for housing, education and care. Access to family planning services directly affects the number of births too.
In East Asia this change happened very quickly. In South Korea fertility was around six children per woman in the 1960s and fell below 1 within a few decades. Long working hours, high housing and education costs and late marriage are often cited among the causes. In China, besides the family planning policy in force since 1980, urbanisation and rising education are thought to have played a part.
Low fertility and a high number of births can go together
A country with a low fertility rate can still be home to a great many babies, because when the population is large, so is the number of women who can give birth. India is the best example: despite about 2.0 children per woman, about 23 million babies are born there each year, around 17 per cent of the world's births. In China, although fertility is about 1.0, about 9 million babies are born each year.
How births are distributed around the world
In the ten countries with the highest fertility, about 22 million babies are born each year. That is roughly equal to the births in India alone, around 17 per cent of the world's births. In these countries income per person is low and child deaths are high. Nigeria, with about 7.7 million births, is the largest in the group. That is more than ten times the roughly 0.7 million births in Japan.
In the ten countries with the lowest fertility, about 12 million babies are born each year, around 9 per cent of the world's births. If you take China out of this group, the other nine add up to about 3 million, around 2 per cent of the world's births. In these countries the population is ageing, the number of workers is shrinking and the burden of caring for the elderly is growing.
According to UN projections, over the coming decades the share of the world's babies born in Africa will rise and the share born in Asia will fall. So if you were born again today, you would be more likely to be born in Africa than past generations were.
Where does the United Kingdom stand?
In the United Kingdom there are about 1.5 children per woman and about 660 thousand babies are born each year. That is below the replacement level of 2.1, and life expectancy is about 81 years. Among the 70 countries on this site it ranks 51st from the top for children per woman. For details, see the United Kingdom page.
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