Climate Concern, Economic Capacity, and Fertility Intentions: Comparing Parents and Non-parents across 27 OECD Countries
Using data from 27 OECD countries, this study reveals that climate concern negatively impacts fertility intentions, with short-term worry primarily reducing plans among parents and long-term anxiety deterring childless individuals—particularly those with lower economic capacity.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
For decades, demographers have tried to understand why families in wealthy nations are getting smaller. The usual suspects are well-known: the high cost of raising a child, the struggle to find affordable housing, and the shifting balance between work and family life. These factors explain much of the picture, but they focus almost entirely on the present moment. They ask what people can afford today or what jobs are available now. Yet, having a child is a long-term commitment that stretches far into the future. It requires a belief that the world will remain stable enough to raise a family in. As the planet warms and weather patterns become more erratic, a new question has emerged: does the fear of a changing climate make people decide not to have children? This is not just about whether the weather is hot today, but whether people feel secure enough about the future to bring a new life into it.
A team of researchers from Yonsei University in South Korea set out to answer this question by looking at the minds of nearly 13,000 people across 27 wealthy nations. They used a massive survey conducted in late 2024 that asked adults about their worries regarding the climate and their plans for having children. The researchers were careful to separate two groups: people who already have children and those who do not. They also distinguished between two types of worry. One type is short-term concern, which asks how worried someone is about the climate in the next year or two. The other is long-term concern, which asks about worries extending ten years or more into the future. By analyzing these responses alongside the participants' income levels, the team discovered that climate anxiety does not affect everyone in the same way. Instead, it acts differently depending on whether a person is already a parent, how far into the future they are looking, and how much money they have to weather the storm.
The study revealed a clear split in how these fears influence family planning. For parents who already have children, the immediate future matters most. When these parents expressed higher levels of worry about climate change in the near term—specifically over the next one or two years—they were significantly less likely to plan for another child. The data showed that for every step up in their level of short-term worry, their intention to have an additional child dropped by about 10.5 percent. This suggests that for those already managing the daily responsibilities of raising a family, the fear of immediate climate disruptions, such as extreme weather or economic instability caused by the environment, makes adding another child feel too risky. In contrast, long-term worries about the distant future did not seem to change their minds about having more children.
The picture looked quite different for people who do not yet have children. For this group, the short-term worries about the next year or two had no measurable effect on their decision to start a family. Instead, it was their long-term concerns that mattered. When childless individuals expressed deep worry about the state of the world ten or more years down the road, they were less likely to intend to have children at all. This aligns with the idea that deciding to become a parent for the first time is a profound leap of faith in the future. If the future looks unstable or dangerous, the desire to bring a child into that world fades. The researchers found that for childless people, a higher level of long-term climate concern was linked to a roughly 4.2 percent reduction in their intended number of children.
Money played a crucial role in softening these fears, but only for the childless group. The study found that economic capacity acts as a buffer against long-term climate anxiety. Among people without children who were worried about the distant future, those with higher incomes were less likely to let that worry stop them from planning a family. As their economic resources increased, the negative link between their climate fears and their desire for children grew weaker. It appears that having more financial security gives people a sense that they can protect their future children from environmental risks, making the long-term outlook feel less threatening. However, this protective effect of money did not show up for parents making decisions about additional children, nor did it change how short-term worries affected anyone.
The researchers were careful to note that their study cannot prove that climate fear causes people to stop having children. It is possible that people who are already hesitant to have children are simply more likely to worry about the climate, or that other unmeasured factors are at play. Furthermore, the study focused on intentions rather than actual births, and there is often a gap between what people say they will do and what they actually do. Despite these limitations, the findings offer a nuanced view of how the climate crisis is entering the private sphere of family planning. It is not a single, uniform force that stops reproduction. Instead, it operates through different channels: immediate fears deter parents from expanding their families, while distant fears discourage childless people from starting one. The ability to pay for security can ease the mind of those considering parenthood, but it does not erase the fundamental question of whether the future is safe enough to raise a child in.
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