This episode examines how global anxieties around fertility and population change continue to shape reproductive politics. Why do governments still target women’s bodies—whether to raise or restrict birth rates—and how do these pressures undermine reproductive rights and democratic trust? Drawing on new UNFPA data, our guests reveal why people across countries have fewer children than they desire, and how economic precarity, unequal care burdens, and gender norms matter far more than incentives or alarmist rhetoric. Tune in to hear why defending reproductive autonomy is essential to building resilient, democratic societies today.
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Shalini: [00:00:00] Welcome to Democracy in Question, the podcast series that explores the challenges democracies are facing around the world. I'm Shalini Randeria, Professor of sociology and social anthropology at Central European University, Vienna, and Senior fellow at the Albert Hirschman Center on Democracy Graduate Institute, Geneva.
This is the fourth episode of season 11 of Democracy in Question. I'm very pleased to welcome today two guests, Alanna Armitage and Rebecca Zerzan, both of whom work at the United Nations Family Planning Agency, the UNFPA. Alanna is currently UNFPA representative for Mexico and country Director for Cuba and the Dominican Republic. She is an anthropologist by training and has worked to promote women's health and human rights for 25 years for the UNFPA in Africa, middle East, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia. Rebecca is based in New York as the senior editor of UNFPA´s State of [00:01:00] World Population Report. This annual flagship publication of the UNFPA explores urgent global matters related to population dynamics and policies, as well as sexual reproductive health and rights[1]. She's worked for over two decades as a researcher and a writer focusing on health and human rights.
Questions of reproduction and fertility are among the most salient and also polarizing political issues in many societies across the world, and they'll probably remain so for the foreseeable future. States today are not trying to change their borders any longer but are influencing the composition of their respective national populations. Numbers matter in autocracies, but they matter even more so in democracies and also in what I have termed “soft authoritarian” regimes where elections are held regularly. Birth rates and immigration numbers are thus [00:02:00] at the top of the political agenda everywhere. Mainstream parties, conservative ones, and even socialists to an extent, have normalized right-wing populous rhetoric on these issues by trying to keep immigration low while attempting to raise birth rates through pronatalist policies.
Demographic anxiety since the 1950s, about so-called overpopulation has given way today to panic about shrinking and aging populations. Attempts to raise birth rates through demographic engineering dominates politics and policies in the global North, as in many parts of Southeast Asia. That's why I've invited two experts working with the UNFPA to examine three main sets of questions with me today. One, in view of the meagre results of [00:03:00] expensive pronatalist policies by governments, which are the policy options that are likely to succeed in raising birth rates? Second, are people keen on having larger families the world over, and if so, what prevents them from fulfilling their desire for children? Finally, the vexed relationship between environmental problems and population growth, both on the national level and globally.
For full disclosure, I should say that I was the senior technical advisor on this year's state of world population report of the UNFPA. We'll be discussing this report today and the empirical evidence on which its findings and also its recommendations are based.
Shalini: Welcome to the podcast, Alanna, and thanks so much for joining me from Mexico City.
Alanna: Thank you so much, Shalini, for the invitation and greetings from Mexico City.
Shalini: Thanks Rebecca for joining me from the New York headquarters. It's been a pleasure working with you on the report of the UNFPA, which we are going to be [00:01:00] talking about today.
Rebecca: Thank you so much. Great to be here.
Shalini: Let me begin by pointing out an often-unacknowledged tension between the blind spots on gendered individualism and an alternative perspective that situates women's choices in a cultural and sociohistorical context, which is replete with power dynamics which shape these choices.
Women don't conceive babies all by themselves. Since men are equally responsible for high or low birth rates, how [00:02:00] do you explain that earlier panics about overpopulation, and also current anxieties about depopulation, are all centered on women, on women's bodies, women's responsibilities for bearing either too many or too few children? Almost all available modern contraceptives are for use by women. Also, most government programs aiming to reduce or to increase the size of a country's population target primarily women. What do you think must be done to put men at the center of public policy on the question of reproduction?
Alanna: I think this is a crucial question which our 2025 report tackles. Historically population discourses, whether [00:03:00] about too many or too few people, have been overwhelmingly focused on women's bodies. And I think that's for a number of deeply entrenched reasons. First of all, there's the biological reality that women are the ones who bear children, which has been historically conflated with them bearing the sole responsibility for reproduction. So, this has made women the most visible and accessible targets for state intervention. I think it's simply easier, though as our report points out profoundly misguided, to regulate female bodies through contraceptive access or abortion laws, than it is to influence the complex web of societal factors that leads to a couple's decision to have a child.
Secondly, I think that these panics are often rooted in patriarchal power structures. Controlling reproduction is a means of controlling women's roles in society. So, the overpopulation narrative often cast women with large families as [00:04:00] uneducated or irresponsible, ignoring the systemic issues of poverty and lack of access to healthcare and contraception. And today, conversely, the current depopulation anxiety often frames educated women, who delay childbirth for their careers as selfish. And in doing that we really ignore the immense socioeconomic barriers that people are facing. But in either case, women's autonomy is undermined, as you pointed out, and they're blamed.
And about bringing men into the conversation, I think, this is really the center of the conversation and we need a multi-pronged approach, which is discussed in our report. First of all, we need to explicitly recognize and incentivize shared parental responsibility. That includes generous, non-transferable paternal leave, not just [00:05:00] maternal benefits. And we're seeing that in many countries already. We need healthcare and contraception focusing not just on females but also investing in promoting male contraceptive methods and then changing social norms, which is the hardest but most critical part. We need public campaigns and educational initiatives to challenge the stereotype of childcare as women's work. And we need to celebrate and normalize the involved fatherhood. I think our latest report really highlights this and shows that many women are citing the lack of partners willing to share in the caregiving burden as a key reason for why they're having fewer children than they desire. So, this does show that men's attitudes and behaviors are central to the equation. We just need to make this more visible and make it a focus of public policy.
Shalini: Rebecca, can you say something about the work that UNFPA [00:06:00] has done to bring men more into the focus of debates about population policies?
Rebecca: I think, something that we struggle with is very often when we talk about the gender lens, there is the perception that we are hewing to some kind of an ideology, men versus women, that there's some kind of a zero-sum game. There's this misperception that the genders are at odds. I think that we are most productive when we're not looking at it in this black and white zero-sum game kind of way. A lot of it, as Alanna had said, emerges out of this [00:07:00] history of patriarchy where we don't even question some of the assumptions. The assumption that pregnancy and childbearing are the result of active volition, of decision-making, the assumption that if childbearing rates fall, that this is the result of decisions made by women.
And what we know at UNFPA from the work that we do is that too seldom are people actually exercising choice. And what we see in this report as well is that it's not just women who are unable to exercise free and informed choice about reproduction, but that men as well are facing the same kinds of barriers to a different degree and extent, of course. I think that recognizing the ways in which both men and women are harmed by these gender biases and by these misperceptions is really crucial. So, for example, in recent years we've done research [00:08:00] on the prevalence of unintended pregnancy, and we've seen that nearly half of all pregnancies are unintended, which is a terrible denial of the exercise of choice when it comes to the most intimate and life-changing decision that a person can make. And that's not just going to be disruptive for a woman's life, right? That's also disruptive for the life of men and boys who are affected. So, I think that recognizing those commonalities and having those conversations in a way that doesn't frame them as men versus women, that's really important.
In terms of our actual programming, UNFPA is doing a lot of work in this area. We talk about having gender responsive, gender aware messages in our comprehensive sexuality programs that we work with governments to implement. So that both boys and girls understand these issues in a nuanced way and in a relationship affirming way. We also work with health providers trying to bring [00:09:00] men into those conversations about family planning so that it's not just a woman who goes in with a provider and it's her job to not get pregnant or to get pregnant. But it's recognized as being a couple's joint decision-making where both men and women have decisions to make about their own bodies and futures.
Shalini: Let me turn to some examples to better understand the interconnected aspects of democracy, or the lack thereof, and reproduction dynamics. What measures have various democratic and authoritarian governments in different parts of the world used to encourage population growth? Are there any successful examples of governments being able to incentivize citizens to have larger families?
I'm thinking of the whole gamut of such attempts to boost birth rates by a poor country like Romania to rich Scandinavian countries with a great deal of gender equality in family and workplace. Did coercive [00:10:00] measures like prohibiting access to contraception, which is what Ceausescu did in Communist Romania succeed, and if so, at what cost? And have generous welfare state provisions in Sweden, Finland, Norway managed to successfully raise and maintain higher birth rates?
Alanna: That's a great question. Shalini. I also want to congratulate you on your work for making the links between democracy and demography. I think it's an area that's so important and neglected. I think we've seen that governments have tried a vast array of measures, which generally fall into two camps, as you mentioned, either brutally coercive policies or incentive-based support systems. And the results tell us everything about the importance of human rights.
So, if we take the example that you just mentioned, probably the most [00:11:00] extreme, or one of the most extreme coercive examples, was Ceausescu's Romania. In 1966, in order to force an increase in the population, his regime passed a decree which effectively prohibited all contraception and abortion. Did it succeed in raising the birth rate? Well, perhaps for a very short time, but the human cost was catastrophic. The policy led to a dramatic spike in maternal mortality from unsafe illegal abortions. And it filled orphanages with tens of thousands of children whose parents couldn't care for them, creating a lost generation. So, any success in raw numbers was built on the suffering and death of women and the destruction of family. So, I would say this is a profound failure of humanity. But this coercive model was common in authoritarian states. We've seen in Nazi Germany, [00:12:00] fascist Italy, in the Soviet Union in the past, they were all implementing similar bans on abortion and contraception. And sometimes even making it a capital offense, while at the same time running campaigns with prizes or gold medals for motherhood.
On the other side, you have the incentive-based models. As far back into the 1920s, France and Belgium had family allowance schemes. Many other European countries did try these financial bonuses and grants. I think the key difference, as you are pointing out, is the political context. And this gets to the heart of what these contrasts tell us. They're telling us that we have to be really careful not to draw false equivalencies because the so-called pro-family policies of an authoritarian regime are fundamentally different from the family support policies of a liberal democracy.
In authoritarian [00:13:00] states, we see the incentives have almost always been paired with the stick of coercion. You get a bonus for the fourth child, but you might get imprisoned for seeking an abortion. In a rights-respecting welfare state like Sweden the goal of generous parental leave or subsidized childcare is not to force a demographic outcome, but to reduce the barriers that prevent people from having the children they already desire. So, to answer your question very simply, coercive measures have never succeeded in any meaningful human sense. They only inflict misery. And the success of supportive welfare-based provisions can't be measured just by a rising birth rate. I think their true success lies in whether they advance gender equality and empower people to make their own choices free from state coercion or economic desperation. And for us, in United Nations Population Fund, that's the only measure of success that really matters.
Shalini: Rebecca, [00:14:00] in this year's report one of the arguments that's been made is that a policy which is seen as responsive to people's needs is much more likely to succeed than one, which is seen as imposing a certain behavior and normative pattern as mandatory. Have economic incentives like subsidies and financial incentives been successful in raising birth rates long-term anywhere in the world? Like a one-time child bonus, which the US government is now proposing, or monthly childcare payments of the kind that the earlier Polish government initiated, or free cars or tax benefits of the kind that the Orban government is proposing in Hungary? Have these kinds of economic measures been successful in raising birth rates long-term anywhere in the world?
Rebecca: That's a really great point. Some of it is really a [00:15:00] semantic issue because a baby bonus, for example, is a monetary payment after somebody has given birth. Is it fundamentally different from a child welfare payment meant to cover the costs of the first few months of infancy. Sometimes we find that talking about the need to prevent coercive measures is met with a really strong concern that what we are saying is to end financial support for childbearing. And I think it's really important to make a clear distinction because it's not the fact of financial support for families that is necessarily going to be seen as an incentive. Or what is described as an incentive for some might be seen by others as [00:16:00] simple, logical, rational efforts to support prospective parents, who are simply facing financial challenges and having children.
So, when we talk about incentivizing childbirth, or the term that's often used “pronatalism”, it says two different things to two different camps of people. It's more helpful to be precise when we're talking about both the objective and the end result. If we're really thinking about these kinds of financial schemes meant to kind of unlock a higher birth rate, the evidence is pretty mixed. Generally speaking, when you look at the figures, sometimes there is a short-term increase where people might be moving up the timing of having a baby in order to take advantage of some kind of scheme. But over the life course, a person is not more likely to have more children [00:17:00] because of these financial bonuses and benefits. I would echo what Alanna had said. We should try seeking not a certain demographic outcome, but rather seeking an improvement in the experience of human life, right? To have an improvement in the quality of people's experience of healthcare and raising their families and equitable conditions in the workplace. So, if that is our objective and we look at things like support for families, for people to exercise their own free and informed choice, then those kinds of investments in people's ability to raise the number of children that they want under the conditions that are enabling those outcomes do tend to be better.
Alanna: It's not that financial support is irrelevant. It just means it's more effective when it's part of a broader holistic package. The evidence shows that these policies have a much greater impact when they're designed to be responsive to people's needs. When policies are framed as a means of supporting family wellbeing and gender equality, they're more effective, but they also build trust, which I think is relevant to this conversation because they're seen as the state helping people achieve the families they desire rather than trying to bribe them into having more children for demographic reasons.
Shalini: So, I want to come back to the point of language and semantics, [00:19:00] which Rebecca just made and look at some of the really alarmist language that is being used on both sides of the population debate. Alarmist language can be rather counterproductive and can lead to short-term and ill-conceived solutions. During the Cold War, for example, the narrative and the image of so-called “population explosion” had an enormous impact on public perceptions. People didn't stop to think or question that populations do not explode and that pregnant women do not bear bombs. Similarly, the current rhetoric in Eastern Europe and Central Asia of “demographic security” has not only pointed to migrants as a threat to a country’s security, but also responsibilizes again, women to bear more children in order to make the country “secure”. And my most recent example is from President Macron's speech last [00:20:00] year in France when he started talking about demographic re-armament in terms of an imagery of a war, a crisis. Alanna, you were able to change the discourse at UNFPA and subsequently also of several member states in this regard by introducing the term “demographic resilience” instead of the framing in terms of “demographic security”. Could you talk about how and why you tried to change the discourse?
Alanna: Thank you for that question because it was a fundamental part of our work in the regional office for Eastern Europe and Central Asia. We have to recognize [00:21:00] and understand that demographic change can be fearful. However, our role is really to make them see that they shouldn't have this fear. I saw firsthand how this discourse of “demographic security” was creating anxiety and leading to counterproductive policies. And the term itself, “security” frames population change as a threat to be defended against. And, as you mentioned, it often gets linked to ethnonationalist ideas where falling fertility rates among the majority ethnic group are seen as a national security risk. And migrants or minorities are viewed with suspicion.
[00:22:00] Based on these politics of fear, the “us” versus “them”, or “originals” versus “migrants”, this definitely leads to restrictive policies that violate individual rights, particularly women's reproductive rights. And it's a discourse that's looking for enemies rather than solutions. I think one of the best things that we did in the region, and you were a big part of that, Shalini, because we brought a group of academics together to bridge the academia and policy worlds, and we introduced the concept of “demographic resilience” to fundamentally reframe the conversation.
And one of the most important aspects of this work is the recognition that governments do have real concerns. We cannot ignore those concerns. We're not saying that demographic change isn't without challenges because it is.
But resilience is not about resisting change, but about the ability to [00:23:00] adapt, to plan, to thrive amidst this change. So instead of asking, how do we stop our population from shrinking or aging, the demographic resilience approach is asking, how can we build a prosperous, inclusive society and economy regardless of our demographic trends? So that shift was crucial. The concept of “demographic resilience” is taking hold, and mainly because it's a positive and proactive approach. It's rights-based and it aligns perfectly with the Cairo program of action and our core mandate at UNFPA[2]. And finally, I think it broadens the policy toolkit. So instead of focusing narrowly on trying to boost birth rates, demographic resilience really encourages governments to invest in human capital.
Shalini: Rebecca, let me turn to you on this. The latest State of the World Population Report, [00:24:00] which was launched in June 2025, introduced the term “reproductive agency”. Could you say something about the choice of the new framing?
Rebecca: Reproductive agency is a really important and a powerful concept, but it doesn't replace reproductive rights. Instead, it offers context and support to it. Reproductive rights are very much rooted in a body of international legal norms and international jurisprudence. [00:25:00] We really need to be talking about sex and reproduction, which is already a hard thing to talk about, but we also need to be talking about those things in broader ways. There are so many other factors that can affect people's ability to negotiate sex, to decide whether they want to have sex or not, to getting pregnant, to deciding how many children they want to have, to deciding who they want to have children with. For example, factors like availability of affordable housing, job security, the social norms of the people that they're dating. All of these have a very [00:26:00] strong influence on people's reproductive choices. When we talk about reproductive agency, we're talking about all of those various factors which are themselves a pathway towards the full realization of reproductive rights.
Shalini: This year's report is based on a survey that examined two important questions, which are indirectly questions about democracy too, in as much as they have to do with constraints on the exercise of one's individual choices and aspirations. As far as reproduction is concerned, the survey inquired into people's desires and aspirations about the number of children they would ideally have liked to have had compared to the family size that they have. And it does [00:27:00] identify the real gap, as you call it, between desired and achieved family size from the perspective of people themselves rather than from that of the governments. And secondly, it asked people about the reasons responsible for that gap, including about their concerns for their own future in these uncertain times. So, let's start to look into some of the empirical basis of the recommendations of the report based on the survey. Rebecca, could you talk about the survey itself and some of its results?
Rebecca: The survey was really important for us because we were confronted with a lot of presumptions that people everywhere were making: the presumption that the number of children that a family has is the expression of a realized desire, for example. [00:28:00] We worked with YouGov, which is an international polling firm that we've worked with in the past. And we surveyed 14,000 people across 14 countries, and those countries are home to more than a third of the global population. So we wanted to look at people in communities everywhere. And in particular we looked at people across a range of countries with very different fertility rates. The Republic of Korea, Thailand, Italy, which are known for having smaller birth rates. And then also Nigeria, South Africa, Morocco, which are on the higher side. We looked at the full range.
What we find is, that no matter the fertility rate of the country people are unable to realize the family size that they desire. Roughly one in five people globally expect that they will not achieve the number of children that they want to have. And the figures are even more stark when you look at people who've completed their reproductive lives. [00:29:00] More than 40% of people say that they did not meet their ideal number of children. So, the question is why are so many people having fewer children or more children than they desire? We find that more than half of people are attributing this to economic concerns. But there are other issues as well. 11% say that unequal caregiving burdens are going to undermine their ability to have the children that they would like to have. Concerns over the future, political instability, climate change are also a really important reason that people are not having the children that they would like to have. And about 14% said that a lack of a partner or lack of a suitable partner played a role.
Shalini: Did the findings of the survey surprise you in any way, or did the findings resonate with your experiences in the regional offices that you have headed? Alanna, did you find anything that would have been at odds with the kinds of data that you were looking at earlier, or the kinds of observations that you made?
Alanna: These findings were so useful in that they really validated what we've seen occurring across the world, in the past decade. For me, these findings resonate both in the specific context of Mexico, but also in my previous roles as regional director in Central Asia, Eastern Europe. The survey identified universal trends that I've seen in all of these regions. And the big one, of course, is this gap between desired and actual family [00:31:00] size, which is a phenomenon that we're seeing across the world. Many young people are telling us that they'd love to have more children, but the economic uncertainty, the high cost of housing, the lack of state support for families makes it feel impossible.
And I think these young people are making a very rational choice based on these immense constraints and not necessarily a free choice based purely on desire, let's say. And interestingly, in Mexico, the survey showed that for women over 50, 31% of these women had fewer children than they actually wanted; 16% had more. And in Mexico the survey did point out that of course the big issue are the socioeconomic barriers. While the demographic profile in Mexico is younger than in Europe, these same issues of [00:32:00] economic precarity, informal labor, the high cost of raising a child are constant concerns for young people. The issue of the burden of care work, of course, is a big one. As is the issue of finding a suitable partner. Whether it's an eastern European country grappling with immigration and low birth rates, or a dynamic youthful country like Mexico facing its own set of economic and social challenges, the central message of the report really holds true. And that is that people's ability to form families that they desire is being constrained by forces often beyond their immediate control. So the real crisis is the frustration of these desires.
Shalini: I was struck in the survey findings by the fact that so many younger men and women talked about not only their economic constraints, but the [00:33:00] psychological strain of bringing up children in the current constrained circumstances they're facing, coupled with the very high expectations regarding parenting. And yet most people in all the countries that you surveyed and across socioeconomic status positions seem to stress that they wish to have children, not for the kind of instrumental reasons that are usually attributed to parents for having more children, like, for example, additional family income or support in old age. But people were saying they would like to have had more children, or they have children purely because children provide happiness and joy. So Rebecca, how do you think we square this circle about the huge psychological burden, not just the economic constraints in parenting, but also [00:34:00] the sheer joy which children bring, because it seems to be that these two pull in opposite directions when people are making choices.
Rebecca: Yes, absolutely. This was a really powerful finding for me, in particular as a woman in my forties with two young children. I identify very powerfully with both of those findings; that children provide deep and profound sense of joy. And yet the investments that are required and the daily labor that is required is very, very intensive. And to me it really showcases that duality can exist and does exist for so many people. And that people are looking at childbearing less as an issue of return on investment and that they're not making the decision to have children based on some kind of financial calculation about old age care as we've traditionally considered it. But rather thinking about children aspirationally [00:35:00] as whether or not having children would fulfill a deep and meaningful personal desire, and what are the conditions under which having a child would fulfill those desires. Very often we find that people would want to have a child but would want to raise that child under conditions that they don't feel they would currently be able to provide. And so to me what that means is, that these so-called incentive schemes are going to be a lot less useful than having this much more rights-based approach where we're talking to people about enabling them to realize their own reproductive ambitions.
Shalini: Another interesting [00:36:00] finding of the survey was how often young people all over the world brought up the question of involuntary childlessness and the lack of affordable infertility treatment, as well as barriers to adoption and to surrogacy in so many countries. And these are the kinds of legal obstacles, which could probably be more easily removed compared to the changes needed in cultural norms which affect decisions about family formation. The kinds that were mentioned in the survey were the absence of gender equality both in society at large and at home, as well as the difficulty of finding a partner who's willing to share the responsibility of childcare. How could these kinds of societal norms be changed in a democratic fashion rather than trying to impose the kinds of draconian solutions that we've talked about, which don't work. Do you have any [00:37:00] interesting insights on this conundrum, Alanna, from your own experiences in Mexico or in Central Asia?
Alanna: I'll get to the first part of your question first because I think it's too often neglected, and this hidden crisis of involuntary childlessness goes along with the pervasive second issue. And I think we need to address both of these issues in a democratic approach that expands rather than restricts choice. So starting with involuntary childlessness, in Eastern Europe it's a big issue and it's not been sufficiently part of the reproductive rights conversation. I think for some people this gap between desired family size isn't about social pressure, it's about biology, it's about cost, it's about legal hurdles, as you mentioned. And so it means that we need to mainstream infertility [00:38:00] care as a public health issue and not a private luxury. So, this involves integrating diagnosis and treatments like IVF into national health systems to make them affordable for everyone, not just for the wealthy. And it also means creating clear rights-based legal frameworks for adoption and surrogacy to make these pathways to parenthood safe and accessible. We did some work on this in Eastern Europe. That's an area I think that we need to continue to explore and we need to continue to invest in.
The other issue though, that you were raising. The report does show that societal norms can be equally challenging, particularly for women. And this is where we do need to create this enabling environment where more equitable norms can flourish. And that means, things that UNFPA are [00:39:00] supporting around the world, redefining parental leave, specifically through well-paid non-transferrable paternity leave or even grandparents leave, which we've seen as a powerful tool in, in some Scandinavian countries. And I think it's a powerful tool that structurally encourages this shared responsibility. The other issue is, we need to make childcare a public good by treating affordable, high-quality childcare as essential public infrastructure. In that way we're really validating care work and lifting the enormous pressure that generally defaults to women. And then promoting equality in the workplace. And this means tackling this motherhood penalty that women often face.
It's not just the government that [00:40:00] needs to ensure that we have these types of policies, but the private sector also has a huge role to play. And UNFPA has supported several projects together with the private sector promoting these care policies, gender-based family policies, etc. So ultimately, I think whether we're talking about the cost of IVF or the lack of an engaged partner, the democratic path forward is to remove these barriers, whether they're biological, financial, legal, and social, that stand between people and the families, that they're really longing for. This comprehensive rights-based approach is the only path forward to address the demographic challenges that we're seeing today.
Shalini: Rebecca, to me another interesting finding of the recent survey carried out for this report is the low trust that citizens have in their respective governments. Within a period of 30 to 40 years, [00:41:00] for example, the governments of China and South Korea have swung from highly restrictive policies, obliging the limitation of family size to now desperately urging their citizens to have two or three children. Do you think that the lack of trust in public policies may be due to the fact that people experience this kind of major shift in official policies within their own lifetime and are reacting therefore rather cautiously to the government's new policy?
Rebecca: That's a really great question and that's something that I tried to look into quite a lot in the development of this report. We don't have a lot of great studies on this specific issue when it talks about public trust over the course of decades. But certainly there is evidence that [00:42:00] shows that short-term government approaches are very often met with skepticism or concern. And that those short-term approaches can result in people undertaking measures that are in some ways even counterproductive to what the intention of the policy itself was.
There are very high rates of involuntary childlessness in a lot of places. And yes, that is a biological constraint that people are facing, but very often it is a counterproductive result of policies that have sought to eliminate or reduce access to abortion services, for example. [00:43:00] So in places where people have very high recourse to unsafe abortion in order to plan their families, there is very often high rates of secondary infertility. Also, in circumstances where governments are reducing access to contraceptives that the response from people is very much to see this as an impingement of their individual choice. [00:44:00] I think the issue of building trust is a really critical one. And again, that goes to the issue of democracy, of listening to and being responsive to the needs of people, showing that the government is serving the needs of the people rather than expecting people to serve the objectives of the government.
Alanna: This is such an important piece of what UNFPA does to support [00:45:00] countries in terms of promoting these sustainable long-term policies because we do know that these short-term policies just don't work and they do erode trust, as you've mentioned. So, when a government spends decades telling its citizens that having more than one child is a burden on the state. And then abruptly reverses course and declares that it's now a patriotic duty to have more children, it really does expose the policy as being driven by state targets rather than individual wellbeing and rights. UNFPA advocates for providing consistent policy support enabling people to make their own informed choices regardless of whether the national birth rate is low or high. And I think that way trust can be rebuilt. [00:46:00]
Shalini: While Rebecca was making her point about secondary infertility, I was thinking one of the kinds of policies that needs to be really intimately linked with any kind of thinking about demography are healthcare policies. For example, in central Europe healthcare has deteriorated, reproductive healthcare, but also normal healthcare has deteriorated. What you get is untreated STDs and untreated STDs are one major cause for secondary infertility. So women have the first child and then they're unable to have the second one. But I want to turn to a different set of issues. [00:47:00] In a minimalist sense, of course, democracy is very much a game of numbers. But so is demography. And the economic foundations of democracy were long thought in the West to be dependent on continuous limitless growth. A model that now has become universal. But it also used to presuppose demographic growth. By now, however, some of this tacit universal assumption has become problematic. Numbers matter, but in the sense that there is a risk of continual decline in the size of the global or national population, numbers become a matter for political contention. So one of the arguments which we are hearing is, on the one hand, the need for larger national populations because of shrinking workforces [00:48:00] and the need to shore up social security systems, generation-based pension systems, etc. And on the other hand, the ecological argument that a large population would be an ecological burden on natural resources, most of which are finite. Would you like to comment on this particular tension between economic arguments and ecological arguments being made by two very different constituencies?
Alanna: I love this question, and I think this question goes to the heart of the historical anxiety around population and the answer too is that our understanding of whether numbers matter really has fundamentally changed. Historically you had the Malthusian pessimists fearing that too many numbers would outstrip food [00:49:00] supply. Then after World War I, we see European nations panicked about not having enough numbers for national defense and economic strength, and that narrative is still very strong.
But in both cases, people are being reduced to raw numbers, and women's bodies, of course, always become instruments for achieving a demographic target. So today we and UNFPA are arguing for a radical shift in this perspective. And the real question is not: are there too many people or too few people, but are we creating the conditions for all people to live lives of dignity and opportunity? We know that there is a projected eventual decline in the global population. And we don't see this as a risk, I think it's a success story. It's the result of decades of progress and health education and crucially people, especially women, exercising their right to choose if, when, and how many children to have.
Regarding the ecological burden that you mentioned. I think it's true that a [00:50:00] smaller population could ease pressure on resources, but the population numbers are red herring, if we don't talk about the real issue, which is consumption patterns. And I think there's a large body of evidence on that one. Framing the climate crisis as a problem of overpopulation in the global South, for instance, is a dangerous distraction from the urgent need for wealthy nations to address their unsustainable consumption.
So back to your question, do numbers matter? Yes, they do. We need to understand our age structure in order to prepare the types of policies needed, either for children or older people. But what really matters is building demographic resilience. We need to shift our focus from these numbers to ensuring quality of life and, and a sustainable future for everyone. [00:51:00.
Rebecca: I think there's been a real sea-change in how younger generations are looking at this tension. It seems like on the economic side, we want continuous growth. On the ecological side, we want the environmental burdens to tick down. But I think that young people are really looking at these issues in a much more nuanced way. Just because the economy is doing well doesn't mean that all people within the economy are benefiting. [00:52:00 We are now facing serious concerns with the ecological footprint on the planet that we are going to be inheriting. Why can't we measure these things in different numbers, in a different sense? Why aren't we measuring things like human welfare, equality, dignity rather than just looking for an endless expansion of numbers on one side of the ledger and, and endless reduction on the other. There's a real intergenerational issue there, where young people are saying, hey, the logic here is questionable.
Shalini: Let me turn to my final question. Alanna, you've mentioned the ethnonationalist argument, which is being made by a lot of governments, usually right-wing conservative ones, but even by the French government under Macron. Because they're thinking of [00:53:00] the nation purely in ethno-nationalist terms. So, only the French should be reproducing the French nation, or the Hungarians, the Hungarian ones, or the Germans, the German one. And therefore, migration seems to have been factored out of the demographic dimension because it's focused entirely now on discourses and policies aimed at raising birth rates, increasing fertility. But it seems to me that the current demographic panic is also being fueled by culturalists or civilizational arguments by right-wing pronatalists who are making a spurious argument about the extinction of western Christian civilization. In this kind of an apocalyptic extreme right demographic imagination, it's always someone else, [00:54:00] or usually a racialized Other, a religious Other who is too many and too numerous, and is multiplying too fast. One's own group defined by race, religion, ethnicity, national belonging is proclaimed to be at risk because of a kind of worldview that can only think in terms of us versus them, as groups which are both historically constant, fixed and with permanent boundaries. If this diagnosis of the current panic about shrinking birth rates and shrinking populations is true, how do you think we could go about best addressing it?
Alanna: That is I guess, the most dangerous aspect of this entire debate. This pernicious, racialized narrative around [00:55:00] demographic change, around numbers. And my own research in Eastern Europe shows that this is not a fringe idea. It's really at the heart of so many official population policies and concerns in certain parts of the world. And as you yourself have said, Shalini, in your academic work, this discourse is almost never about numbers. It's about a nation with a particular phenotype. This fear has been sensationalized by concepts like the “Demographic Winter”[3] or by Camus’s “Great Replacement Theory”[4], which frames migration as an invasion and an ethnic substitution. And this idea is being championed by certain leaders who state very plainly that we need children from a specific ethnic group. So, to change this perception, I think, is to change the entire framework of the conversation. [00:56:00].
First of all, expose the fallacy. Societies are not and have never been static. They've never been monolithic blocks. They're dynamic, diverse, constantly evolving. And I think the fantasy of ethnic purity has no place in a modern, globalized world. The second area that we're working hard is to champion rights and inclusion. So, the antidote to the “great replacement” is not to deny the demographic changes happening, but to point out why it's not a threat. It's to argue that a country's strength lies in its capacity to integrate diverse peoples, to build social cohesion, to harness human capital of all of its residents, regardless of where they were born. [00:57:00]. Instead of panicking about numbers, we need to focus on building societies that people want to live in, that they want to contribute to and raise families in. A resilient society is one where all people, including women, migrants and minorities, are empowered and included. It's to build a more just equitable and supportive democracy where everyone feels that they belong and have a future. And I think that's the only way we can defeat the politics of fear. [00:58:00].
Rebecca: We studied some of these preconceptions in an earlier State of World Population report. In 2023, we did a different YouGov survey across countries asking people what their opinions were about the global population, the global fertility rate, and then also asking them about their opinions about their domestic fertility rate and population sizes. And people were much more inclined to be concerned about the fertility rates globally rather than the fertility rates of their own countries. And they were much more likely to rank the fertility rates, or population size of their own country as being just right, or maybe too small. What's also notable is that in the OECD countries that participated in the survey had [00:59:00] more respondents viewing global fertility rate as harmful rather than their domestic fertility rate. Which connects with what Alanna had been saying earlier about affluent countries being disproportionate consumers, wreaking disproportionate havoc on the climate. And yet those are the countries that see their own fertility rates as being fine, but the global Other as being problematic. [01:00:00].
Shalini: Thank you so much Rebecca and Alanna for this really fascinating conversation about questions of demographic dynamics, about some of the remedies that can be proposed, but also a very powerful argument for a rights-based approach to questions of reproduction for which the UNFPA stands.
Alanna: Thank you. It was a really great conversation, Shalini. Thanks. And wonderful to be with Rebecca, [01:01:00] always.
Rebecca: Fantastic. Thank you so much, both.
Shalini: We heard that women alone have been targeted one-sidedly regarding problems of societal reproduction due to patriarchal power structures that still influence our societies and our thinking. While earlier, policies on overpopulation blamed uneducated women in the global South for bearing too many children, today it's educated professional women in the global North who are held responsible for bearing too few children. So, focusing also on the responsibilities of men in reproduction would be a step in the right direction.
Declining fertility rates [00:52:00] have been turned into a politically motivated moral panic in many societies. Both my guests sharply criticized coercive measures such as the ban on abortion or decreasing access to contraception. Instead, they both made a strong case for policies geared to creating more gender sensitive and equitable and family- friendly societies. This year's UNFPA's State of the World Population report stresses the need for policies that are responsive to people's actual needs rather than imposing demographic goals as determined by the state on their citizens. Financial incentives coupled with pronatalist campaigns, which are currently being used by many right-wing governments, are unlikely to succeed in raising birth rates. They not only violate reproductive rights and autonomy, but are also more [00:53:00] likely to erode trust in governments and will also thus prove counterproductive. The report focuses, therefore, on reproductive agency. i.e. the conditions that would enable citizens to make informed reproductive choices and decisions, and also on policies that support the welfare of families.
As my guests explained, the most striking finding of the report is of a universal gap between the desired and the actual number of children. In all societies surveyed, people are unable to fulfil their desire for children due to material constraints and insecurity, and also due to their fears of the future. Precarious jobs, lack of affordable housing and childcare clearly prevent the realization of larger families that many people aspire to. Survey respondents also noted legal barriers to IVF, to [00:54:00] surrogacy. Women pointed out that what often prevented them from fulfilling their desire for children is the absence of a partner who would share the responsibility of childcare. Without tackling such economic, legal, or cultural obstacles, no government can hope to raise fertility rates merely by providing direct monetary incentives.
Alanna made a powerful argument for taking demographic concerns seriously. But she advocated for replacing the widely used concept of “demographic security” in this context by the concept of “demographic resilience”. Resilience refers to the ability of a society to adapt, plan and positively build on population change with rights-based inclusive policies for a diverse society. It's important to counter, therefore, the resurgence of right-wing, ethno-racial narratives and political fearmongering [00:55:00] about immigrants and foreigners corrupting the imagined “pure” genetic stock of the nation. And to realize that our societies have never been homogenous ethnically and they've also never been culturally pure in the past.
Equally problematic in this context, is the revival of the old Malthusian logic in current environmentalist discourses. It's not the size of the population that is an ecological problem, either at the national level or globally, but rather the highly consumption-intensive lifestyles of the rich in every society. It would be important, therefore, to shift the terms of the debate. My guests argued for focussing on the enabling conditions for everyone to lead lives of dignity without want, and to create a sustainable future where men and women can freely pursue their desire for children. Only so could individual [00:56:00] reproductive rights agency and autonomy be brought together with societal wellbeing.
This was the fourth episode of Season 11. Thank you very much for listening, Join me again in January when I focus on the question of pronatalism and the attack against so-called “gender ideology” by soft authoritarian leaders. My guest will be Eva [00:56:00] Fodor, professor of Gender Studies at the Central European University. We will discuss social welfare policies in Hungary aimed at raising the birth rate of some parts of the Hungarian population and unintended positive and negative consequences of these.
Please go back and listen to any episode you might have missed. And of course, let your friends know about this podcast if you're enjoying it. You can stay in touch with the work of the Central European University www.ceu.edu and the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy at www.graduateinstitute.ch/democracy .
[1]UNFPA (United Nations Populations Fund): The real fertility crisis.The pursuit of reproductive agency in a changing world (State of the World Population Report), New York 2025. Link: https://www.unfpa.org/swp2025
[2] The “International Conference on Population and Development” (ICPD) held in Cairo, Egypt, in September 1994 denotes a paradigm shift and important turning point in the perspectives and policy decisions on women´s reproductive rights in the overall context of human rights focusing on women’s individual rights, reproductive autonomy, and informed consent rather than on fertility targets. The approved final Action Program became the guiding document for the United Nations Populations Fund (UNFPA), cf.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Conference_on_Population_and_Development
[3]The term „demographic winter“ is used mostly in sociology, demography, and public policy debates to describe a situation where birth rates fall so low that a population begins to shrink and age, creating long-term social and economic challenges. It is not a technical, scientific term in demography, but rather used descriptively or with a polemical and ideological intention. Cf.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility
[4] In his book “Le Grand Remplacement” (The Great Replacement), published in 2011, the French far-right author Renaud Dumas attributes recent demographic changes in Europe to intentional policies advanced by global and liberal elites. Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Replacement_conspiracy_theory