Family · Fertility
Calm Data Editorial
People want more kids than they're having.
Across rich countries, the number of children people call ideal sits well above the number they actually have. The gap is widest where raising a kid costs the most.
The finding
In every country measured, the ideal number of children people report is higher than the number they actually have, and the gap is widest in South Korea and the United States.
The breakdown
- 1This is not "nobody wants kids anymore." Stated ideals have barely moved. Americans still call 2.7 ideal (Gallup), same as 2018. Europeans cluster around 2.2. The wanting is stable. The having collapsed.
- 2South Korea is the extreme case. Married women there called 2.16 ideal in the last big national survey, and the country's actual fertility rate is 0.75. That is a gap of over 1.4 kids per woman, the widest here.
- 3The US gap is the next biggest: ideal 2.7, actual 1.62. And the US has the most expensive childcare in the OECD, around a third of a couple's wage for two kids in care. The places with the biggest gaps tend to be the places where kids cost the most.
- 4Two honest caveats. Ideal is a stated preference, fertility is a period rate, so this is an illustrative gap not a strict shortfall. And surveys differ by country. But the direction is the same everywhere: people are landing below what they say they want.
How it's built
- 1For each country, take the mean ideal/desired number of children from survey research: Europe from the 2011 Eurobarometer (Sobotka & Beaujouan 2014; Testa 2012), the US from Gallup's 2025 poll, Korea from KIHASA's 2018 national fertility survey.
- 2Take the actual total fertility rate from UN World Population Prospects 2024, the average births per woman if current age-specific rates held for a lifetime.
- 3The gap is ideal minus actual fertility. It pairs a stated preference with a period rate, so read it as an illustrative gap, not a precise cohort shortfall.
- 4Countries are sorted by the size of that gap. The 2.1 line marks the replacement rate.
- 5Affordability is context, not an axis here: the US figure of childcare at roughly a third of a couple's wage is the OECD net-childcare-cost indicator.
Sources
- UN World Population Prospects — total fertility rate · 2024
- Gallup — Americans' Ideal Family Size Remains Above Two Children · 2025
- Sobotka & Beaujouan — Two Is Best? (Eurobarometer 2011, Population and Development Review) · 2014
- KIHASA — 2018 National Survey on Fertility and Family Health (Korea) · 2018
- OECD — Net childcare costs indicator · 2023
Caveats
- —Ideal and actual are different measures. Ideal is a stated preference from surveys; fertility is a period rate. The gap is illustrative, not a strict cohort shortfall.
- —Survey instruments differ by country and year. The US (Gallup), Korea (KIHASA, married women), and Europe (Eurobarometer) are not perfectly comparable, so read across countries with care.
- —Period TFR can understate completed family size if people are just having kids later. Even so, ideals sit above fertility on both period and cohort measures.
- —This shows a gap, not a cause. Affordability is one plausible driver among several, including delayed partnership and career timing. It is not proof.
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