Europe reached sustained low fertility first. Its clearest lesson is not that every country looks alike. It is that below-replacement fertility has persisted across countries that differ in language, religion, family policy, labor markets, and wealth.
Across the European Union, the total fertility rate fell to 1.34 in 2024, the lowest value in Eurostat’s series for today’s 27-member bloc. About 3.55 million babies were born, compared with 6.8 million in 1964. The long comparison spans large changes in population size and age structure. It is a birth-count comparison, not a measure of how much the family size of one cohort changed.
Different countries, no replacement-level case Total fertility rates in EU member states in 2022. The image predates the bloc’s 2024 record low and should be read as a map of variation, not current values. via Wikimedia Commons
Southern Europe shows the depth of that persistence. In Eurostat’s 2024 series, Spain’s TFR was 1.10. Italy combined similarly low fertility with a mean age at first birth above 31. A trough can last long enough to reduce the size of the birth cohorts that follow.
Northern and western Europe once appeared to offer a durable higher-fertility pattern. France and several Nordic countries paired family benefits, childcare, and women’s employment with period rates nearer replacement than southern Europe. Those arrangements still make family life easier. Recent declines have narrowed the demographic difference. France remained among the higher-fertility EU members in Eurostat’s 2024 series at 1.61, still well below replacement.
Central and eastern Europe add emigration to the pattern. After state socialism, births were postponed during economic upheaval, and many young adults later left some countries. Fewer children were born while part of the population most likely to form families moved elsewhere.
A population can grow while births trail deaths
The European Union has recorded more deaths than births since 2012. Its population nevertheless grew in 2023 and 2024 because net migration more than offset natural decrease. Europe contains both sides of that movement: western cities enlarged by migration and eastern or rural places losing young adults. The continental population can grow while its births still trail its deaths.
Childcare, leave, housing, and income support can improve family life. The 2024 comparison does not identify one European institutional model that has kept period fertility at replacement. Europe’s distinct lesson here is persistence: decades of economic and institutional variation have not made below-replacement fertility a brief or uniform episode.
Citations
- Eurostat, “EU fertility rate at 1.34 live births per woman in 2024”, March 6, 2026.
- Eurostat, Demography of Europe—2026 edition, 2026.
- Eurostat, “EU population increases again in 2024”, July 11, 2024.