In 2024, Canadian fertility stood at 1.26 children per woman, its lowest level ever recorded. That same year, 64% of Canadians aged 15 to 24 said they wanted at least one child, compared with 53% in 2021. These conditions are reported as likely to influence fertility intentions, but the data cited do not demonstrate their causal effect on their realization. Housing, childcare, and employment are identified as domains that could affect demographics.
The essentials
- Canadian fertility fell to 1.25 in 2024, but the desire for children among young adults increased over the same period, according to Statistics Canada.
- 64% of 15-to-24-year-olds wanted at least one child in 2024, compared with 53% in 2021: the gap between intention and realization is widening.
- The obstacles named by young Canadians are material: housing costs, access to childcare, employment instability.
- Comparison among OECD countries suggests that targeted everyday policies can narrow this gap without turning demographics into an imperative.
- Canada’s trajectory from 2030 to 2045 depends less on the convictions of young adults than on the conditions they will face when they reach family-building age.
Desire for children rises while birth rates fall
The two curves move in opposite directions. This is the striking finding of the Statistics Canada survey published in 2026 on Canadians’ reproductive intentions. Between 2021 and 2024, the share of young people aged 15 to 24 wishing to have at least one biological child increased by eleven percentage points. Over the same period, the fertility index continued to decline, reaching 1.25, far below the generational replacement threshold of 2.1.
Unrealized fertility refers strictly to the fact that a person has fewer children than desired; an aggregated gap represents a fertility gap. It invalidates the simplest explanation: no, young generations have not abandoned family. They want children more than before. This divergence justifies close monitoring of the material conditions that can influence the realization of these plans.
The increase in intentions among 15-to-24-year-olds deserves to be taken seriously. This age group will not have children immediately, but it reveals the state of aspirations as a cohort enters adulthood. When this indicator rises while fertility falls, the coexistence of these two phenomena justifies identifying factors that can influence the realization of these intentions.
What young Canadians say
Statistics Canada does not merely measure intentions: the survey asks about fertility intentions and, in certain modules, the assessment of necessary conditions. Young people aged 15 to 24 were more likely to judge their economic conditions insufficient, particularly their financial capacity and adequate housing, as well as work-life balance.
These three factors share one characteristic: they do not depend on values or preferences, but on material conditions of existence. A young Canadian adult renting a two-bedroom apartment in Vancouver or Toronto, on a precarious lease and with variable income, is making a rational calculation when postponing a child project. That calculation can last a long time.
Access to childcare weighs distinctly on women. A child often represents a career interruption or income reduction borne asymmetrically. An earlier article on the return of cohabitation already showed how the lengthening of time spent with parents, due to lack of affordable housing, delays the entire adult life calendar, including family formation. The two dynamics reinforce each other.
Employment instability adds another layer. Short contracts, constrained self-employment, digital platforms offer income without safety nets. Starting a family in this environment requires a tolerance for risk that many reasonably refuse to assume.
The limits of monetary transfers
Faced with falling birth rates, governments’ standard response is a birth bonus or family allowance. Canada has a long history of financial support for families. These instruments have their use, but Statistics Canada data suggest they do not address the priority obstacles.
A birth bonus does not enlarge an apartment that is too small. It does not create a childcare spot in a neighbourhood where waiting lists exceed two years. It does not turn a temporary contract into stable employment. Money helps, but it responds poorly to the structural constraints that young Canadians identify as their main obstacles.
Comparison with other OECD countries illuminates this point. Nordic countries maintain fertility rates significantly higher than Canada’s, around 1.5 to 1.7. Their family policies combine long and flexible parental leave, accessible and affordable childcare, and housing markets less strained than in major North American cities. Public money flows there, but it finances concrete services rather than cheques.
France, despite its recent difficulties, long demonstrated that massive investment in childcare could support women’s participation in the labour market while maintaining fertility above 1.8. Its decline since 2014 coincides with increased pressure on housing in large urban areas and precarious conditions in certain segments of the labour market. The equation remains the same.
Everyday policies as demographic leverage
Treating housing, childcare, and stable employment as explicit demographic policies represents a significant reframing. Not on the level of values, but on that of budget priorities and coordination among departments.
Today, housing, early childhood, and employment policies are designed and evaluated by their own criteria: property access, child supervision ratios, unemployment rates. Their effect on fertility remains an unmeasured byproduct. Making this link explicit would allow different priorities in budgetary trade-offs.
A concrete example: conditioning certain housing assistance for young households on criteria of proximity to childcare services. Affordable housing and accessible childcare treated together, within the same public policy. The idea is not new in Nordic countries, but it remains absent from the Canadian landscape. Similarly, parental leave that is more flexible and better shared between partners would reduce the professional cost borne primarily by women. Canada has improved its parental leave scheme in recent years, but the share taken by fathers remains limited.
These approaches guarantee nothing. They create favourable conditions without constraining individual choices. This is precisely the difference between a demographic policy that respects freedom and a national imperative to have children, which generates resentment without results.
Two trajectories for 2030–2045
The long-term stakes are visible through two scenarios that current data allow us to distinguish, without confirming them.
In the first, everyday policies are explicitly treated as demographic levers. Affordable housing advances in mid-sized cities and suburban areas. Childcare spots multiply. Employment stabilizes for cohorts aged 25 to 35. An improvement in material conditions could enable better realization of the fertility intentions declared by young adults.
In the second, material conditions do not improve quickly enough. Housing remains out of reach for middle-income households in large cities. Childcare waiting lists persist. Precarious work durably affects young cohorts. The gap between declared intentions and observed fertility could widen.
Canada would then enter a dynamic similar to that already experienced by South Korea or certain regions of Southern Europe, where fertility has collapsed below 1.0 in highly strained urban contexts. An earlier article on the demographic trap facing emerging economies showed how very low fertility becomes locked in: thin generations produce fewer potential parents, which amplifies the decline.
Both scenarios are conditional. Neither is inevitable. But the signals to watch are already identifiable: the annual change in the gap between desired number of children and actual fertility, regularly measured by the Canadian Community Survey, and the share of households aged 25 to 35 accessing affordable housing within two years of a first child’s birth. These two indicators, viewed together, will signal earlier than any birth rate figure whether the trajectory tips in one direction or another.
The immigration question does not replace the fertility question
Canada has long compensated for its low birth rate through sustained immigration, among the highest in the OECD as a proportion of its population. This strategy has maintained demographic growth and fuelled the labour market. It remains a legitimate and useful policy.
It does not, however, resolve the divergence between declared intentions and actual fertility that Statistics Canada data highlight. For two reasons.
The first is structural. Recent immigrants to Canada, particularly those arriving in large metropolitan areas, face the same housing and childcare constraints as natives. Their fertility rate converges quickly toward that of the host country, sometimes as early as the first generation. Immigration brings people; it does not bring the conditions for these people to realize their family plans.
The second is political. Using immigration as a permanent demographic adjustment variable presumes a durable social consensus that Canada cannot take for granted. Tensions around immigration levels have intensified since 2023. A demographic policy that depends entirely on external immigration is fragile in the face of political fluctuations.
Treating housing, childcare, and employment as demographic policies does not disqualify immigration. The two approaches are complementary. But one does not exempt us from the other.
Lessons from Canada’s gap for neighbouring countries
The United States is experiencing a comparable dynamic, with fertility fallen around 1.6 and surveys showing that young Americans want on average more children than they will have. Housing has become the central constraint in large American cities, with prices far outpacing wage growth since 2010. Access to childcare there is even more unequal than in Canada, owing to the lack of a structured public system. The dynamic of the gap between intention and realization is probably even stronger there.
Canada provides rare data: a rise in fertility intentions measured simultaneously with a decline in actual fertility. This statistical scissors is a valuable analytical tool. It shifts the analytical axis: rather than asking why young people no longer want children, we ask why those who want them cannot have them.
This shift changes the public policies to be designed.
The Statistics Canada survey on childcare spots already showed that withdrawals are documented, dated, and linked to specific waiting lists.
The question for Canadian and American policymakers is not to convince young people to want children. They do want them. The question is whether public policy builds the conditions for that desire to become possible.
Sources
- Statistics Canada, Making plans for the future: Canadians’ intentions to have biological children, 2026, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2026002/article/00003-eng.htm
- OECD, fertility indicators and comparative family policies, OECD Family Database
- Statistics Canada, Canadian Community Survey 2021 and 2024, https://www23.statcan.gc.ca/imdb/p2SV.pl?Function=getSurvey&SDDS=4501
