Lives, Choices and Futures 2026 — SDGCounting Document Briefs

Publisher: UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund), with survey design and analysis by a team from Bocconi University; data collection by Kantar Lightspeed and GeoPoll
Source: Findings from the Demographic Futures Survey 2026, a self-administered online questionnaire of 108,926 Internet-connected young adults aged 18–39 across 73 countries and territories, fielded in late 2025 and early 2026
Focus: What young people want from relationships and parenthood, and the conditions that shape whether they can achieve it. Released ahead of World Population Day, 11 July 2026
Related: The Gender Snapshot 2025, on SDG 5 and reproductive rights as a measurement problem.

UNFPA asked 108,926 young adults in 73 countries what they want from partnership and parenthood, and what stands in the way. Its answer reframes the “fertility crisis” almost entirely: the problem the survey finds is not that young people have stopped wanting families, but a gap between the families they say they want and the financial security, jobs and housing that would let them build them. The measurement caveat is stamped on the report’s own pages, though. This is a survey of Internet-connected 18-to-39s, and it is not nationally representative of anyone.

The headline

Two thirds of the world’s population now lives in a country or area where the total fertility rate sits below 2.1 children per woman, the level associated with a stable population. UNFPA’s response to that number is to change the question. Drawing on 108,926 Internet-connected young adults aged 18 to 39 across 73 countries and territories, the Demographic Futures Survey finds that partnership and children remain widely held aspirations, and that economic insecurity, housing constraints and the difficulty of finding a suitable partner are what young people most often name as barriers. Family life is rated important by 73 per cent of respondents. The report’s framing is that demographic outcomes should be read through agency and choice, not aggregate birth rates.

From the report’s foreword (UNFPA): “The question is not whether young people value these life goals, but whether they have the conditions to realize them. Financial security, stable employment, affordable housing and support all matter.”

The numbers

The sample. 108,926 Internet-connected young adults aged 18–39, across 73 countries and territories in all world regions, surveyed online in the fourth quarter of 2025 and first quarter of 2026. Most country samples ran 1,000–2,000; 14 countries fell below 1,000.
They still want partnership. More than two thirds chose an ideal arrangement that includes marriage, 36 per cent before living together and 34 per cent after a period of cohabitation, while 16 per cent prefer to remain single. Among those aged 25–39 who ideally want to marry or live with a partner, about one quarter are currently single and not dating, higher among men (30 per cent) than women (19 per cent).
Two children is the common ideal. Two is the most-cited ideal family size in most regions and every income group (45 per cent in high-income countries, 41 per cent in upper-middle, 32 per cent in low- and lower-middle). The global mean ideal is 2.62 for men and 2.43 for women. Larger ideals dominate in West and Central Africa and East and Southern Africa.
The gap between want and have. In almost every country, respondents aged 35–39 report fewer living children than the ideal reported by 18-to-39-year-olds. The gap runs 0.86–1.03 children among women and 1.24–1.55 among men across income groups, and is widest in West and Central Africa (1.91 for women, 2.19 for men).
Unmet, not unwanted. Among respondents aged 35–39 who have no children, most would ideally like them: 79 per cent of men and 72 per cent of women. Childlessness at 35–39 peaks in high-income countries (49 per cent of men, 41 per cent of women), and even there a majority of the childless still want children.
Financial security is the gate. It is the top-rated consideration for partnership (81 per cent) and the top precondition for parenthood (88 per cent), just ahead of stable employment (87 per cent) and feeling emotionally ready (85 per cent).
What blocks it, and what motivates it. Economic and housing constraints are the most-cited barrier both to partnership (57 per cent) and to having children (72 per cent). Yet the leading reason to have children is simply the joy they bring (80 per cent); government encouragement and future-workforce arguments rank near the bottom.
Hope, unevenly. Two thirds of respondents feel somewhat or very positive about the future, but those feeling very positive range from 62 per cent in West and Central Africa to 19 per cent in Western Europe, Australia, Canada and the United States.

The counting angle

The report is unusually plain about who it counts. The Demographic Futures Survey is, in its own words, not statistically representative of national populations. Because it was conducted online, it captures Internet-connected young adults, a group that skews more urban and more educated, particularly in lower-income settings. UNFPA weights the results by sex, age and education to pull them closer to each country’s population, but tells readers the figures are not population-level estimates and warns against over-reading country results where samples are small. The optimism gradient is a case in point: the report notes that rosier outlooks in lower-income settings partly reflect the high socioeconomic profile of the people the online survey reaches.

The central gap number carries its own caveat. The comparison of ideal family size among 18-to-39s with the actual children of 35-to-39-year-olds mixes two different age groups, so some of the shortfall is postponed rather than permanently unrealized childbearing. The report says so directly and calls the gap a descriptive indication, not a measure of unrealized fertility intentions. That honesty is the point: this is a portrait of aspirations and reported constraints, not a fertility register, and it is strongest read as the successor to UNFPA’s 2025 State of World Population survey, which found across 14 countries that many adults cannot achieve the number of children they want, when they want them.

Our read: The measurement move is the story. By making agency and choice the metric rather than the birth rate, UNFPA turns a “too few babies” panic into a question about conditions, and then declines to dress up a convenience sample of the online young as the voice of a generation. The gap it documents is real and consistent across regions; the number attached to it is, by the report’s own admission, a signpost rather than a count.

Why it matters for the SDGs

The framing lands squarely on the reproductive-rights targets. SDG 3.7 calls for universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services, and SDG 5.6 for universal reproductive rights, the freedom to decide whether, when and how many children to have. UNFPA is arguing that the relevant indicator is not how many children a society produces but whether people can realize the family they choose, and that the barriers young people report, insecure work, unaffordable housing, thin childcare and unequal care work, are the machinery through which that right is enabled or denied. Read that way, a low or high birth rate is not the outcome to fix; the gap between intention and possibility is.

Watch & read

Lives, Choices and Futures, the full report and Demographic Futures Survey findings (UNFPA).
The Gender Snapshot 2025, the companion read on SDG 5, reproductive rights and how thinly gender and rights are measured.

Figures are as reported by UNFPA from the Demographic Futures Survey 2026 (fielded Q4 2025–Q1 2026, 108,926 respondents, 73 countries and territories). Results are weighted by sex, age and education but are not nationally representative; they describe Internet-connected young adults aged 18–39. The ideal-versus-actual family-size gap compares different age groups and is, per the report, a descriptive indication rather than a measure of unrealized fertility.