Total fertility rate and the demographic deficit
- Eurostat dataset
- demo_find
- Reference period
- 2024
- Unit of measure
- live births per woman
Key estimates
- EU aggregate (2024): 1.34 live births per woman.
- Highest value: Montenegro at 1.75 live births per woman; lowest: Malta at 1.01 live births per woman.
- Cross-country mean 1.40 live births per woman, standard deviation 0.18, coefficient of variation 12.6% across 37 reporting countries.
- Aggregate change 2013→2024: -11.0% on a constant panel of 36 countries.
How far below replacement level has European fertility fallen? Eurostat dataset demo_find reports total fertility rate and the demographic deficit for 37 reporting countries, with 2024 as the most recent period carrying broad coverage. The European aggregate stands at 1.34 live births per woman. Every European country now records fertility below the 2.1 replacement threshold, making the size of the deficit the relevant quantity.
The five highest values in 2024 are recorded by Montenegro (1.75), Bulgaria (1.72), Georgia (1.69), Albania (1.64), Serbia (1.64), all expressed in live births per woman. At the opposite end of the distribution sit Malta (1.01), Spain (1.10), Lithuania (1.11), Poland (1.14), Italy (1.18). The ratio between the highest and the lowest observation is 1.73, while the median country reports 1.41 live births per woman against a mean of 1.40 live births per woman.
Dispersion is narrow: the standard deviation across countries is 0.18 live births per woman, giving a coefficient of variation of 12.6%. The mean sits below the median, which indicates that the distribution is pulled by the lower tail rather than being symmetric. Any European average quoted for this indicator therefore describes a synthetic country that few Member States resemble.
Between 2013 and 2024 the summed value across the 36 countries reporting in both periods moved by -11.0%. The largest relative increases are observed in Portugal (+16.5%), Serbia (+14.7%), Bulgaria (+11.7%); the largest decreases, or the smallest increases, in Lithuania (-30.2%), Türkiye (-28.8%), Finland (-28.6%). Because the panel is held constant, this change is not an artefact of countries entering or leaving the sample.
This indicator has no normatively preferred direction; its analytical value lies in the structure of the distribution and in how national positions move relative to each other over time. The estimates above are reproducible: the dataset identifier, filter dimensions and reference period are stated in the methodological note, and the series can be re-downloaded from the Eurostat dissemination API at any time.
Methodological note
Source: Eurostat, dataset demo_find ('Fertility indicators'), extracted from the Eurostat dissemination API (JSON-stat 2.0) on the dataset update of 2026-06-24. Filter dimensions: indic_de=TOTFERRT. Unit of measure: live births per woman. Reference period: 2024. Geographic perimeter: national reporting units with two-character geo codes (37 countries with a non-missing observation); European and euro-area aggregates are excluded from the cross-country statistics and reported separately. Descriptive statistics (mean, median, population standard deviation, coefficient of variation) are computed unweighted over reporting countries. Change over time is computed on a constant panel: only countries with a non-missing observation in both the base and the reference period enter the calculation, which removes composition effects but may differ from the officially published aggregate. No imputation, seasonal adjustment or re-scaling has been applied beyond what Eurostat performs at source. Flagged provisional and estimated observations are retained as published.
Source data
The underlying series can be inspected and re-downloaded from the Eurostat data browser.