Eurostat said on 27 October that the EU’s total fertility rate was 1.34 live births per woman in 2024, the lowest since the series began in 2001, and set out how the decline is spread across 1,165 regions. In 439 regions, or 37.7%, the rate was below the EU average; 714 (61.3%) were above it and 12 matched it.
The national numbers, first published in March, are stark. In 2024, 3.55 million babies were born in the EU, a 3.3% decrease from 3.67 million in 2023, and the fertility rate fell from 1.38. Bulgaria recorded the highest rate, 1.72. Malta had the lowest, 1.01, followed by Spain at 1.10 and Lithuania at 1.11. Over the past 20 years the EU rate has varied between 1.34 and 1.57, consistently below the natural replacement rate of 2.10.
Where the lowest rates are
Rates below 1.00 were recorded in 16 Spanish regions, 7 Polish regions, 5 Italian regions, 3 Greek regions, and 2 regions in Germany and Lithuania. Fertility was particularly low in Spain’s north-west and certain island regions, and across much of Italy, notably Sardinia. At the other end, at least 1.75 births per woman were recorded in 14 regions in both Bulgaria and France. For sovereign bond investors the geography matters: smaller cohorts mean less future labour supply, and slower potential growth, in the places where fertility is lowest.
The pension arithmetic
Fertility is the slowest-moving input to pension finance and the hardest to reverse. Pay-as-you-go systems pay today’s pensions from today’s contributions, so each smaller cohort becomes a smaller contributor base a generation later. Eurostat put the EU’s old-age dependency ratio at 34.5% on 1 January 2025, up from 33.9% a year earlier, and its EUROPOP2025 baseline projects it to rise to 61.9% by 2100. People aged 65 or over already make up 22.0% of the population.
Public spending need not rise in step. The European Commission’s Ageing Report, as summarised by the Finnish Centre for Pensions, puts EU public pension expenditure at 11.4% of GDP on average in 2022 and expects it to be only a little higher, at 11.8%, in 2070. Holding spending close to that level while the ratio of pensioners to workers climbs implies lower replacement rates or later retirement, which shifts more of the burden onto funded schemes and private saving.
For asset owners the effects compound over decades. Funded schemes with ageing memberships reach negative net cash flow sooner, which raises the value of liquidity and of income-producing assets. Slower labour-force growth tends to weigh on potential growth and on equilibrium interest rates, and lower yields raise the present value of long-dated liabilities. Reserve funds and sovereign funds that backstop public pension systems may face earlier calls on their capital, which shortens their effective investment horizon.
The limits of the signal
A single year’s fertility rate is not destiny. Period rates can understate completed family size when women delay births, and migration adds to working-age populations. Eurostat publishes its EUROPOP2025 projections with a no-migration sensitivity test alongside the baseline. The regional figures for Germany also refer to 2023, not 2024. None of this alters the direction of travel, but it widens the range of plausible outcomes that liability models should carry.
What to watch
- Eurostat’s national fertility figures for 2025: the next annual reading. The 2024 figures were published on 6 March 2026.
- EUROPOP2025 variants: Eurostat’s methodology lists lower-fertility, higher-migration, lower-migration, delayed-convergence and lower-mortality cases alongside the baseline, all of them already published and so a ready-made range for stress-testing membership and contribution assumptions.
- Pension reform in the lowest-fertility member states, where any change to retirement ages or indexation feeds directly into sovereign and liability risk.
Sources
- Record-low fertility, with differences across EU regions, Eurostat, 27 October 2026
- EU fertility rate at 1.34 live births per woman in 2024, Eurostat, 6 March 2026
- Population structure and ageing, Eurostat Statistics Explained, data extracted 2 February 2026
- Population projections at national level (2025-2100) - EUROPOP2025 (proj_25n), Eurostat, accessed 1 November 2026
- Population projections in the EU, Eurostat Statistics Explained, data extracted April 2026
- Pension Expenditure and Projections, Finnish Centre for Pensions, accessed 1 November 2026