Climate Change Worries and Fertility Intentions. Insights from Three EU Countries.

Elena Bastianelli, Bocconi University

Climate change concern is said to influence fertility intentions either by prompting individuals to reduce their intended fertility to alleviate pressure on the planet or by instilling a sense of guilt and concern about bringing a child into a doomed world. However, empirical evidence remains limited. This study examines the relationship between climate change concern and fertility intentions in Finland, Estonia, and Sweden. It explores whether climate worries are primarily associated with a greater likelihood of intending to remain childfree or reducing the intended family size, and how the association differ across countries. Using nationally representative data from the 2021/22 Gender and Generations Survey, the study applies ordinal and multinomial logistic regressions to assess certainty in fertility intentions and the intended number of children, distinguishing between first-birth and higher-order birth intentions. The findings provide, for the first time with representative samples from three EU countries, evidence that climate concern is negatively associated with fertility intentions, driven primarily by childless individuals’ intentions to forgo childbearing. This association holds across countries but is more pronounced in Finland and Estonia, and weaker in Sweden.

Keywords: Fertility, Population, Environment, and Climate Change

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