“A new working paper suggests that remote work may help boost fertility. Using survey data from 38 high- and middle-income countries, the researchers found that couples who work from home at least one day a week have about 0.32 more children on average than those who don’t,” reports The Doomslayer.
“A new study across 38 countries found that among adults aged 20-45 who work from home at least one day per week, actual births since 2023 and planned family size are higher. This implies that an increase in remote work would boost fertility much more effectively than expensive pronatalist policies,” reports Project Syndicate.
People are having children at later and later ages, or — more frequently — not having children at all.
The population growth rate has experienced a collapse over the last decade. In 2015, the average number of children per woman was 2.77 in the Philippines; now, it’s only 1.55 kids. In 2015, the average number of kids per woman was 2.24 in Argentina; now, it’s only 1.14. In Costa Rica, the average number of kids has fallen from 1.76 in 2015 to 1.1 kids in 2025. In China, the number of kids has fallen from 1.75 to 1.1, while in the United States, the number of kids has fallen from 1.84 to 1.58.
“For years, it was treated as a demographic law: as countries grow wealthier, they have fewer children. Prosperity, it was believed, inevitably drove birth rates down. This assumption shaped countless forecasts about the future of the global population,” notes The Doomslayer.
But this turned out to be an oversimplification. Women are having more kids in wealthy America (1.58 kids) and well-to-do Denmark and Norway (about 1.5 kids), than in countries that are not wealthy, such as Colombia and Thailand, where women are having only about one kid, on average. On the other hand, people are still having lots of kids in Africa, which is even poorer still. In most African nations, women still have at least 3 kids on average, although the African birth rate is lower than back in 2020, when women in at least 7 African nations had 6 kids or more on average.
“For many years, wealthier European countries tended to have lower birth rates than poorer ones. That pattern weakened around 2017, and by 2021 it had flipped. This change fits a broader historical pattern. Before the Industrial Revolution, wealthier families generally had more children. The idea that prosperity leads to smaller families is a modern development. Now, in many advanced economies, that trend is weakening or reversing. The way that prosperity influences fertility is changing yet again. Wealth and family size are no longer pulling in opposite directions,” notes The Doomslayer.
