According to Germany's Federal Statistical Office, the fertility rate in Germany in 2024 was 1.35 children per woman, two percent fewer than in the previous year. Provisional figures for 2025 point to a further decline, to around 654,300 births.
But the desire to have children is still there. An analysis by the Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB) shows that women would like to have an average of 1.76 children, and men 1.74.
"Having children remains a central life goal for most young people. The current decline in births therefore does not indicate a waning commitment to family life, but rather points to births being postponed," population researcher Dr Carmen Friedrich of the BiB, said.
Among women, the so‑called "fertility gap" – the difference between the desired and the actual number of children – has recently doubled to 0.41.
How smartphones are changing social interaction
In the search for an explanation for the global decline in birth rates, the Financial Times put a new US study by the University of Cincinnati's Nathan Hudson and Hernan Moscoso Boedo centre stage in May 2026.
Their thesis is that smartphones did not single-handedly cause the global fall in teenage pregnancies but that they have significantly accelerated it.
From around 2007, the year the first iPhone was launched, the birth rate among 15- to 19-year-olds fell sharply worldwide.
Hudson and Moscoso Boedo analysed data from 128 countries with different healthcare systems, social policies, religions and economic conditions.
In many of them, they detected the same kink in the curve, shifted in time depending on when smartphones became a mass-market product locally.
In the United States, the birth rate among girls aged 15 to 19 fell by 71 percent between 2007 and 2024, and among women aged 20 to 24 by 43 percent. For women in their mid-30s it remained stable or even increased.
"We find that teenage fertility has fallen fastest worldwide," Moscoso Boedo said in a press release.
Fewer face-to-face encounters, fewer pregnancies
The mechanism at work is assumed to be social rather than biological. Once enough young people in a peer group own a smartphone, much of their shared life shifts online. Face-to-face encounters that can lead to unplanned pregnancies become less frequent.
Data from the American Time Use Survey backs up this observation. In 2003 US teenagers still spent 68 minutes a day in person with friends and other social contacts; by 2019 that figure had fallen to just 38 minutes.
Over the same period, the time they spent on screens for leisure activities rose from 22 to 96 minutes a day.
To tease apart correlation and possible causation, Hudson and Moscoso Boedo examined the roll-out of 4G networks in US counties. In areas where 4G became available earlier, teenage birth rates fell earlier and more sharply. A parallel analysis for England and Wales showed the same pattern. There, the National Health Service provides universal access to contraception, ruling out social policy alone as an explanation.
What the study does and does not show
The documented effect relates mainly to unintended pregnancies among teenagers. For women over 25, who account for around 80 percent of all births, the data shows no significant impact. The study therefore cannot on its own explain the overall decline in births.
Its value lies rather in making a social mechanism visible: when young people spend less time together in person and shift more of their interaction online, this also changes the circumstances under which relationships – and potentially pregnancies – come about. In this way, the study feeds into a broader debate about how profoundly smartphones have reshaped the social lives of young people.
How Europe compares on birth rates
Germany is following an EU-wide trend. According to Eurostat, about 3.55 million children were born in the EU in 2024, 3.3 percent fewer than in the previous year. The average fertility rate stood at 1.34 children per woman, down from 1.38 in 2023. Since 1964, when it was 2.62, it has almost halved. No European country is currently above the replacement level of 2.1. Within the EU, rates range from 1.01 in Malta to 1.72 in Bulgaria. Among the big economies, France leads with 1.61, while Spain comes in at 1.10 and Italy at 1.18.
The Nordic states have long been seen as models for parental leave, childcare provision and gender equality. Yet in recent years they too have experienced some sharp falls in birth rates.
"Explaining cross-country differences in fertility remains difficult. Many of the factors that once accounted for variation between states seem to have lost importance in recent years," Dr Julia Hellstrand of the University of Helsinki, said.
How working from home is affecting birth rates
Sociologist Martin Bujard of the BiB told public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk that Germany's fertility rate did in fact rise after family policy reforms around 2010. Today, however, issues like rising housing costs and inflation are having a greater impact.
A recent study by the ifo Institute and Stanford University points to another possible lever: in households with at least one day of working from home per week, the fertility rate is on average 14 percent higher than in households without remote working.
Ifo researcher Mathias Dolls said: "Greater flexibility through working from home could help people realise the family size they want."
In Germany, the authors estimate that a rate of working from home comparable to that in the United States could be associated with around 13,500 additional births per year.
