Bridging ambition and hard truths

Young people across Eastern Europe and Central Asia haven’t given up on the idea of having children, but many are struggling to turn that desire into reality. That’s the central finding of new regional data released this week by UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, ahead of World Population Day on July 11. The figures come from the agency’s Demographic Futures Survey, conducted in 2025 among more than 13,500 internet-connected respondents aged 18 to 39 across eleven countries and territories. The results complicate a widespread narrative that falling birth rates in the region reflect a simple decline in interest in family life.

The survey found striking optimism: 65 percent of respondents feel positive about their future, compared with 50 percent in a comparison group from Western Europe and East Asia. That confidence persists even though young people in Eastern Europe and Central Asia report higher anxiety over conflict, economic crisis, and unemployment than their peers in the other regions.

The Desire for Family Remains Strong

Marriage and parenthood are still central life goals. Seventy-nine percent of respondents said they want to marry, versus 63 percent in the comparison countries. Eighty-seven percent cited joy and happiness as an important or very important reason to have children. The mean ideal number of children is 2.6 for women and 2.9 for men in the region’s lower-fertility countries, climbing to 3.7 in higher-fertility ones. Most respondents want two or more.

The survey also found that 95 percent of childless women aged 35 to 39 still want children. That’s a sharp contrast with comparison countries, where childlessness is far more often a deliberate choice. In the region’s own data, more than one in five women in that age bracket remains childless.

The Gap Between Aspiration and Reality

What they actually get is another matter. The gap between desired and actual family size runs to 1.25 children among women and nearly two among men. Ukraine shows the widest divergence: women there report an ideal of three children but end up, on average, with just over one. The data makes clear that the shortfall isn’t about changing attitudes.

The implication for policymakers is that traditional approaches — cash bonuses or tax breaks for having children — are aimed at the wrong target. Young people aren’t refusing to have children; they’re unable to reach the starting line because earlier prerequisites like stable jobs and housing aren’t in place. That suggests resources would be better spent removing those upstream obstacles than trying to bribe people into parenthood.

Florence Bauer, UNFPA’s regional director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, said the disconnect is structural, not attitudinal. “Far from turning their backs on family life, young people in the region simply don’t see the conditions are in place to be able to achieve their aspirations,” she said. The survey identified financial insecurity as the top barrier to both partnership and parenthood, followed by a shortage of suitable housing, health problems, difficulty finding a partner, and the uneven division of childcare and housework between men and women.

Breaking the Chain

Underlying these barriers is a rigid sequence that young adults feel bound to follow: secure employment first, then independent housing, then a stable partnership, and only then children. Break one link and everything downstream stalls. Bauer said this sequence explains why policies that rely on financial incentives tend to fail. “This survey makes clear why policies trying to influence young people’s decisions about having children through incentives or pressure don’t work. They intervene at the wrong stage, at the end of a chain of life milestones whose earlier links are often broken,” she said. “What we need instead is policies that remove the barriers leading up to this decision — in employment, housing, health and gender roles in the family — so that young people can realise their life and family aspirations.”