Fertility rates, which measure the number of children born per woman of childbearing age, have been gradually falling across the world and more than halved since 1963.
Our Births in England and Wales: 2023 release shows that the total fertility rate in England and Wales has fallen to its lowest level on record, at 1.44 children per woman.
The number of children born in England and Wales has been falling for the last decade and is at its lowest since 1977, while the average age of first-time mothers is at an all-time high.
There are several ways of measuring fertility, and many factors influencing the birth of a child.
Often, we don’t know the full story until women have completed their families, which is usually around the age of 45 years.
We can look back through earlier generations to explore different measures of fertility, what influenced them and how many children women had over their lifetimes.
Our birth statistics are mostly available for women because details for the father are not always captured on birth certificates.
Fertility through the generations
Meet our example family. They will represent generations of women through recent history in England and Wales to help explain how trends in fertility can change. For those who have children, we will check in with them on the year their first child was born.
1946 – Mary: motherhood in the post-war boom
This is Mary* - who gave birth to her first child in 1946.
Part of what is often known as the ‘Greatest Generation’, Mary was born in 1920 in a post-World War I baby boom. As a child she lived through the Great Depression and when she was 19 years old World War II broke out in Europe.
Women of Mary’s generation were unlikely to have children without getting married, with just 6.6% of babies born outside of marriage in 1946.
They were also unlikely to marry at an early age. Fewer than two-thirds (61.8%) of those born in 1920 like Mary were married before the age of 25, compared with 81.0% of women born in 1946.
In our example Mary has her first child at the age of 26 years. This was the average (median) age of first birth for women born in 1920, with 53% having a child before the age of 27 years.
Post-war baby booms drove up fertility rates
Number of live births, England and Wales, 1900 to 2023
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As World War II ended more babies were being born, rising from 614,000 in 1939 to 821,000 in 1946, while the number of women aged between 15 and 44 years stayed at around 10 million.
This meant the total fertility rate, which estimates the number of children a group of women might have in their lifetime, rose from 1.73 children per woman in 1939 to 2.47 children per woman in 1946.
Mary went on to have another child, which means she had two children in total.
Beyond the age of 45 years the number of children women might have falls sharply, so at this point we are able to make an accurate estimate of their completed family size. This is the average number of children per woman a group have had in their lifetime, including an adjustment for the small number of later births.
By 1965, when Mary was 45 years old, the average completed family size for all women born in 1920 was 2.00. This is lower than the total fertility rate when she was having children (2.47), which was influenced by higher numbers of births in the post-war years.
1969 – Margaret: earlier motherhood
Now we’ve arrived in the 1960s, how were things different for Mary’s children?
Her daughter, Margaret*, born in 1946, just after the end of World War II, was one of the first ‘Baby Boomers’. This generation were more likely to have children, and earlier in life, than any other since 1920.
The average age of first birth for women born in 1946 was 23 years. More than half (52%) of women born in 1946 had a child before the age of 24 years compared with 32% among women born in 1920.
More women born in the 1940s had children, and had them earlier, than the generations before or after them
Proportion of women who have had at least one live birth by exact ages and women’s birth year, England and Wales, selected birth years 1920 to 1997
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Fewer than 1 in 10 women of this generation had no children at all, compared with around one in five among women born in 1920 or 1969.
In this example Margaret had her first child, Susan, in 1969 when she was 23 years old, three years younger than her mother.
By the early 1960s the number of births had been rising. While women born in the 1920s were still completing their families, those born in the late 1930s and 1940s were having children at younger ages than earlier generations.
As fewer babies were born in the 1930s, there were also fewer women of childbearing age by the 1960s.
With more babies being born to a smaller group of women across a wider age range, the total fertility rate rose to a peak of 2.93 children per woman in 1964.
In the late 1960s, the introduction of the Abortion Act 1967 and increasing availability of oral contraception gave women greater access to birth control. This contributed to a decline in births and the total fertility rate, which fell to 2.47 in 1969, the year that Margaret had her first child.
In the UK, women would need to have 2.08 children on average to ensure the long-term "natural" replacement of the population, known as ‘replacement level’ fertility. By 1973 the total fertility rate fell beneath the replacement level for the first time since the 1940s and has remained lower ever since.
The total fertility rate fell substantially following the introduction of the contraceptive pill and Abortion Act
Total fertility rate, England and Wales, 1938 to 2023
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In the 1960s and 1970s more women were entering the workforce and gaining greater freedoms through equality campaigns. In 1971, when Margaret was 25 years old, more than half of women aged 16 to 64 were employed (52.7%).
Margaret went on to have two children in total, the same as her mother. By the time they were aged 45 years, the completed family size among all women born in 1946 was 2.19, almost 10% larger than the generation born in 1920 (2.00).
This is partly because a smaller proportion of women born in 1946 did not have any children. This contributed to increases in both the total fertility rate during their childbearing years and their completed family size.
1995 – Susan: motherhood later in life
We can now introduce you to Margaret’s daughter – Susan*. Born in 1969, she is part of a group usually known as ‘Generation X’.
Susan had her first child aged 28 years, which was the average age of first birth for women born in 1969.
This was older than her mother or grandmother, as women born since the 1960s have increasingly had their first child at later ages than earlier generations.
Greater participation in the workforce, along with access to birth control, gave Susan’s generation more options.
In 1994, by the time Susan was 25 years old, almost two-thirds of working-age women were in employment (62.2%), around 10 percentage points higher than when her mother was the same age.
This was also the first generation to move away from the traditional link between marriage and having children.
Fewer than two-thirds of women born in 1969 got married by the age of 30 years, and by the mid-1990s more than a third of children were born outside of marriage.
While the number of births fell from around 700,000 a year in 1990 to just over 600,000 in 2000, the fertility rate during this time fell more gradually: from 1.84 to 1.65.
This is because there were also fewer women around Susan’s age at this time, as fewer babies were born in the 1970s than in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Susan went on to have two children in total, the same as her mother and grandmother.
The average completed family size for women born in 1969, like Susan, was 1.91. This stayed quite stable among women born in the 1960s and 1970s, with a slight increase for women born in the late 1970s.
As women have children later in life, the average number of children they have before the age of 30 years has fallen more sharply than their completed family size, and has continued to fall for younger women.
The completed family size increased slightly for women born in the late 1970s, but women are having fewer children before age 30 years
Average number of live-born children to women before age 25 years, age 30 years and completed family size by year of birth of woman, England and Wales, 1920 to 1998
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Women born in the late 1970s have only recently turned 45, so they are the youngest women whose completed family size we can measure. For more on this generation, see our article on Childbearing for women born in different years.
2023 – Chloe: falling birth and fertility rates
This brings us to the youngest woman in the family, Susan’s daughter, Chloe*.
Born in 1997, she is commonly referred to as either a ‘Millennial' or part of ‘Generation Z’. By 2023 she is 26 years old and has not yet had any children.
Only 1 in 5 (20%) women who were born in 1997 like Chloe had a child before the age of 25 years, which is the lowest of any earlier generation. More than half (59%) of women of her grandmother Margaret’s generation had had at least one baby before this age.
This continues the long-term trend towards later births. For women born after the mid-1970s age-specific fertility rates were highest among those in their 30s, marking a shift from earlier generations who had more children in their 20s.
Women born since the mid-1990s are seeing lower age-specific fertility rates in their 20s than any other generation since 1920.
Babies are increasingly being born to older mothers
Age-specific fertility rates for women born in 1920, 1946, 1969, 1977, 1997 and 2000, England and Wales
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While the number of births has fallen to a record low, the number of women of childbearing age is at its highest, with almost 11.9m women aged between 15 and 44 years in England and Wales in 2023.
This meant the total fertility rate in 2023 was the lowest ever recorded, at 1.44.
But as we have seen from earlier generations, completed family size can deviate from the fertility rate if women have children at older ages.
Chloe’s mother, Susan, started having children later than her own mother, Margaret. The total fertility rate in 1995 when Susan started having children was 1.72 (around 30% lower than 2.47 in 1969 for Margaret’s generation). Despite this, her generation’s completed family size was only around 13% smaller (1.91 compared with 2.19).
While we don’t yet know the completed family size for Chloe’s generation, they have more options which might lead them to have children later, with participation in education and the workforce at their highest levels.
By the time Chloe turned 18, more than half of young women were attending university, and at age 25 more than 7 in 10 women of working age were in employment.
Research from the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies has also found not feeling ready, financial pressures, and not finding the right partner are preventing millennials who want children from trying to have them.
Financial pressures might include the cost of housing or childcare, and people may not feel ready to have children because other major life events are happening later, as our Milestones: journeying through modern life article shows. This is not unique to England and Wales but is part of a larger trend across Europe.
The completed family size for Chloe’s generation won’t be available until 2042, when it will become clearer whether women of her age will have fewer children than earlier generations.
Estimates of future fertility rates will be available in our National Population Projections 2022-based release.
What does this mean for the future?
In the long-term, for countries with low mortality to maintain or grow their population without positive net migration, the total fertility rate needs to be around the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman or higher.
The global total fertility rate was 2.3 children per woman in 2022, less than half the rate (5.3) in 1963. The total fertility rate is declining in most countries, even those that had much higher fertility rates in the recent past.
In the European Union the total fertility rate in 2022 was 1.5, following a similar trend to England and Wales.
As we have seen, the fertility rate in England and Wales has been below two children per woman since the 1970s. But the population has continued to grow over that time.
Populations can continue to grow for a long time after fertility falls below replacement level, as it takes some time for population growth to reverse. And the population of England and Wales is projected to continue to grow, largely because of net migration.
The total fertility rate will continue to be influenced by the structure of the population, the number and timing of births. Births will be shaped by socio-economic and cultural factors including access to education, the labour force, childcare and housing.
Despite these fluctuations the completed family size has remained more stable over several generations at around two children per woman.
Data for the latest cohort of women will be available in our Childbearing for women born in different years, England and Wales, 2023 release.
*The women represented in this article are fictitious and their names are assigned based on the most popular name in England and Wales in the years before they were born or in their year of birth (for 1997 only) from our Baby Names in England and Wales release.