Why is the birth rate falling much faster than expected? Data analysis revealed an unexpected reason

Illustrative photo. Source: AP Photo / Pavel Bednyakov

Almost all countries in the world are experiencing a sharp decline in birth rates. There are many explanations for this phenomenon, but a fresh analysis shows that one of the main reasons lies in people's increasing dependence on smartphones. The Financial Times reports the details.

According to UN data, today about 71% of the world's population lives in countries where the fertility rate is below the replacement level (2.1 children per woman). Moreover, in 66 countries, the average indicator is now closer to one than to two. This means that the population there may decline particularly quickly.

Belarus is among the list of countries with the lowest birth rate in the world. According to the Ministry of Health, the number of births in the first half of 2025 in the country was 10.7% lower than in the same period of the previous year. According to information from Belarusian scientists, the total fertility rate in the country in 2024 was 1.1, and in Minsk, it dropped to a critical 0.6.

As renowned journalist-analyst John Burn-Murdoch notes in his analysis for the Financial Times, birth rates worldwide are declining in both developing countries and those just embarking on the path of modernization.

In 2023, Mexico's birth rate fell below that of the USA for the first time. Similar declines have also been recorded in Brazil, Tunisia, Iran, and Sri Lanka. This means that such countries are aging faster than they can become wealthy.

The pace and scale of this decline, as Burn-Murdoch writes, exceed all expectations. Just five years ago, the UN projected 350,000 births for South Korea in 2023. However, the actual number was only 230,000 — a 50% error in the forecast.

And this is happening despite the fact that both women and men in many countries state that they would like to have approximately two children. This constantly growing reproductive gap, Burn-Murdoch explains, is due to our modern lifestyle — primarily the housing market situation and the influence of smartphones.

Fewer Couples — Fewer Children

«In previous decades, the world's birth rate declined because couples had fewer children. Today, the main reason is that there are fewer couples,» writes Burn-Murdoch.

He refers to two studies. One shows that the birth rate in the USA today would be higher than ten years ago if the number of couples had remained constant. The other found that the number of children born to a single mother has remained stable in many industrialized countries. However, the number of women who, in principle, become mothers has sharply declined over the past 15 years.

The popular stereotype that birth rates are falling because women choose careers does not correspond to reality. In fact, the situation resembles a "K-shaped" graph: in highly educated and affluent segments of society, indicators remain stable, while the main decline occurs among people with low incomes and education levels.

Housing Crisis and Economic Uncertainty

In affluent countries, experts have primarily blamed housing shortages for the demographic decline over the past decades. In the USA and the UK, for example, this has become a significant obstacle to starting a family.

According to Burn-Murdoch, about half of the decline in the birth rate in these countries since the 1990s can be explained by the decrease in homeownership and the fact that more young people are living with their parents. Without their own living space, people are less likely to enter into serious and lasting relationships.

And even if couples can afford separate housing, they are increasingly breaking up. In some countries, those who live together are now more likely to separate than to have children — and this has become a sharp deviation from the historical norm.

Other economic factors also do not provide a comprehensive explanation, the expert notes.

The decline in birth rates is happening everywhere: in countries affected by the global financial crisis and in those that avoided it; in Western Europe with its slow economic growth rates, as well as in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, where economies are developing rapidly.

Many explain the situation by the financial insecurity of young people. Indeed, the author notes, the peak of earnings for young people now comes later than in previous decades, and their relative economic status has worsened. However, these are gradual processes that do not explain the sudden and sharp collapse in birth rates.

Social roles are also changing: today, girls are much more likely than boys to receive higher education, and as a result, many women now earn more than low-skilled men. This significantly changes the approach to choosing a life partner, but these shifts are also slow and not uniform everywhere. They are too localized and gradual to be the cause of such a rapid global trend.

The Smartphone as a Birth Rate Killer

Unsatisfied with purely economic explanations, more and more researchers are considering smartphones and social networks as a key cause of the global decline in birth rates.

Burn-Murdoch draws attention to a study by the University of Cincinnati, which shows that in the USA and the UK, birth rates began to fall earlier and more sharply precisely where 4G mobile networks were first implemented. Scientists argue that young people in such regions began to spend less time with each other and more time on their gadgets.

The same trend has affected other countries. In the USA, UK, and Australia, birth rates remained stable in the early 2000s but began to decline noticeably after 2007 — precisely when, in January 2007, the first iPhone was introduced.

In France and Poland, the decline began in 2009. In Mexico, Morocco, and Indonesia, the number of births started to fall in 2012. And while a gradual decrease had been observed earlier in Ghana, Nigeria, or Senegal, it became precipitous between 2013 and 2015.

It was at these moments that smartphones became a mass phenomenon in the respective countries, as shown by Google data on mobile app download queries.

Павялічыць

Illustrative photo. Source: LookByMedia

Lack of Real-Life Contact

The explanation is simple: young people are spending less and less time together. In South Korea, for example, the volume of personal social contacts among young people has halved in 20 years. Those who go out "among people" less often find it harder to find a partner, noted demographer Lyman Stone in an interview with the Financial Times.

Additionally, according to Stone, «if you spend a lot of time meeting peers in real life, your requirements for a potential partner are based on reality. If you spend time on Instagram, your standards are tied to an artificial image of what is considered "normal".»

Finnish demographer Anna Rotkirch notes that sexual dysfunctions are more frequently observed among young people who actively use social networks. Social networks not only consume time but also promote certain values and lifestyles that make establishing serious, long-term relationships much more difficult.

Alice Evans from Stanford University adds: the more traditional a culture is regarding gender roles, the harder smartphones hit birth rates.

Statistics confirm this: the sharpest declines in birth rates over the last decade have been recorded in the Middle East and Latin America. And a recent study showed that social media use is associated with lower birth rates in Sub-Saharan African countries. Conversely, in Southeast Asia, where women's access to the internet is often restricted, the number of single people remains significantly lower.

Evans calls this phenomenon "cultural leapfrogging." Through Instagram and TikTok, young women worldwide gain the opportunity to bypass traditional authorities. This raises their expectations for relationships, to which men in these same countries are often simply not ready.

Павялічыць

Financial Times studies also point to a deep ideological gap between young men and women that emerged specifically in the smartphone era. This division is particularly noticeable among people without higher education: in this environment, women become more liberal (ideologically "shift left"), while men retain their previous views. As a result, in this social group, the number of couples and the birth rate have literally collapsed.

What to do?

How can the trend of declining birth rates be reversed? Government measures, such as child benefits, subsidized kindergartens, and parental leave, have failed to halt the decline — even though corresponding expenditures in developed countries have tripled since the 1980s, writes Burn-Murdoch.

The expert sees no simple solutions. State resources are limited, and economic factors alone are not enough to rectify the situation. When politicians try to encourage couples to have more children, they may miss the core of the problem. Because more and more people simply do not have a partner.

Undoubtedly, affordable housing for young couples and generous birth benefits can help. However, in the long term, only a transformation of approaches to the use of digital media — through cultural changes or government regulation — will be able to alter the trend, concludes Burn-Murdoch.

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