Poland hits second-lowest EU fertility rate at 1.02 children per woman

Poland falls to 1.02 children per woman, leading Europe's demographic collapse

In early 2025, Poland recorded the second-lowest birth rate in the entire European Union: 1.02 children per woman. The data, released alongside figures from @More Births and @Birth Gauge, places the country—long marketed as a bastion of traditional family values—in the same club as Lithuania, which holds the record with 1.01. This paradox is difficult for those who expected social conservatism and religious devotion to act as an inverse contraceptive.

The map of ultra-low fertility in 2025

Demographers define "ultra-low fertility" as any rate below 1.3 children per woman. In 2025, approximately 29 countries fall below this threshold. Those hovering around or dipping below 1.0 form an uncomfortable list: Lithuania, Poland, Costa Rica, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Singapore. Taiwan sits at 0.78 and South Korea at 0.81, figures that turn any debate on pensions into science fiction.

Spain, within this same landscape, rose slightly from 1.12 to 1.13 children per woman, with nearly 1,000 more births than the previous year by these dates. The nuance matters: this uptick is largely attributed to births among mothers of migrant origin, rather than a shift in trend among the native population. According to some circulating calculations, the actual rate for lifelong Spaniards would be well below 0.5.

Why do housing prices rise if the population isn't growing?

The question opening the analysis seems simple: if birth rates are plummeting, why does housing price continue to climb? The prevailing answer has nothing to do with babies. First, total population continues to grow via immigration. Second, the number of household units multiplies: where a five-member family once lived, now two singles aspire to live separately, each with their own apartment. Third, construction has barely resumed since 2008. Fourth, much of the vacant stock is located in areas with no demand, such as rural Spain.

Added to this is a financial factor: easy access to mortgages and many units being reserved in advance. The result is a tense market without needing new births. Housing rises because it is paid for in depreciating euros, argues another school of thought: those who had invested in gold since 2002 would see housing as cheap.

The intelligence argument and demographic suicide

South Korea and Taiwan, two of the nations with the highest IQs globally, are bleeding demographically. The paradox escapes no one: who will manufacture chips and semiconductors when these islands become nursing homes? Some read this as an evolutionary warning: intelligence does not guarantee reproduction, and sharks have survived hundreds of millions of years with tiny brains. Those who reproduce best are not the smartest, but those who exploit others.

Another line of analysis points to capitalism as a self-destructive machine: to grow, it destroys the societies that generate it, causing highly qualified individuals to postpone or discard motherhood. The consequence is that Spain grows by importing unskilled labor while its native population ages. The non-African country with the highest birth rate is Afghanistan, where institutionalized feminism does not exist. That says it all.

Poland is not as traditional as believed

The Polish case dismantles a widespread narrative. Those who expected religiosity and social conservatism to boost birth rates are facing the second-lowest rate in the EU. Polish women have fewer children than Spanish women. And according to data, those having the most children in Spain are of Maghrebi origin, not baptized Catholics.

Poland’s social transformation is described as an imported and financed process: daily protests regarding abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, and feminism, with an artificial air contrasting with Polish stubbornness. Hungary, conversely, resists. Proge, whether coming from Brussels or Washington, ignores GDP or traditions: it arrives, settles in, and leaves birth rates on the floor.

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The exact point where the analysis stalls is this: if neither the richest, nor the most religious, nor the most intelligent countries manage to reproduce above replacement levels, the question ceases to be economic and becomes something else. And no one wants to answer it out loud.