What is happening to birth rates around the world? Fertility trends in most of the northern hemisphere seem to be declining. Even in Albania, the fertility rate according to the latest statistics of 2024 is 1.4. Meanwhile, when asked how many children they want, most people say two or more. But 40 percent of them end up having fewer than their desired number.

So, there is something that makes it difficult for people to have and realize the number of children and family size they want.

The latest report by UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, entitled: The Real Fertility Crisis: Why People Can’t Have the Families They Want now sheds light on what prevents people from having the families they want.

Their biggest obstacle is the economic one. More than half of people said their financial situation, lack of affordable housing, job insecurity or the high cost of childcare had played or could play a role in not having the number of children they wanted.

Other factors include health problems such as infertility, fears about the future, gender inequality and relationship issues, including people not being able to find the right partner to start a family and have children, and the lack of a partner’s contribution to share the burden of family care.

But even in countries with low fertility rates, there are still people who do not have the number of children they want. They may have more children than they wanted, suggesting that people still face difficulties in accessing contraception or avoiding unwanted pregnancies. And, of course, this problem is most severe in countries with high fertility rates.

The high number of people unable to have the size of families they would like, and with such a wide range of reasons influencing their decisions, sends a clear message to governments that they should be concerned about the demographic future of their countries. Low birth rates are not the real crisis; they are just a symptom. The real crisis is our failure to remove the barriers that people face in achieving their dream family and have the number of children they want.

The report’s findings also help us understand why so many governments’ attempts to encourage more births through “child bonuses”, tax cuts, or other financial incentives have failed. The costs of having a child, both financially and in terms of lost career opportunities, especially for women, are generally so high that even generous government payments cover only a small part.

Moreover, financial support does not solve many of the other problems that affect people’s choices, such as the difficulties that many young people face in finding a suitable partner, or the social norms that still place the main burden of family and child care on women’s shoulders, or the difficult choices that women, in particular, have to make as they are forced to choose between having children or having a job.

Creating a world where people can have the families they want requires more than just financial handouts. Nor is pressuring people to have more children helpful. In fact, it risks undermining people’s reproductive rights, undoing hard-won and long-won progress toward gender equality.

Governments need to listen to and take seriously the concerns of young people. So that they too do not sacrifice women’s equal rights and their freedom to make decisions about their bodies for the sake of population numbers. We need governments to increase support for affordable housing and childcare, flexible work and parental leave policies, infertility prevention and treatment, and the promotion of gender equality norms. What we need is to create societies that are truly child-, couple- and family-friendly, that uphold and advance gender equality and reproductive rights, and that fully respect people’s right not to have children, if they wish so.