Source: Turkish Statistical Institute

https://x.com/i/status/2005590015720452594

Türkiye’s fertility rates have collapsed from a 2.1 average in 2009 to just 1.36 in 2025. The main reason is economic, rising living costs, unstable jobs, expensive housing and childcare, and declining real incomes. Across the country, young adults have postponed marriage and have had fewer children.

Provincial differences mainly reflects demographic composition. Southeastern provinces with larger Kurdish and Arab populations have historically shown higher fertility than the more urban, Turkish majority west.

The highest fertility province, Şanlıurfa, has a mixed population roughly 40–45% Kurdish, 25–30% Arab, and 15–20% Turkish and has traditionally had larger families. Yet even Şanlıurfa’s fertility has fallen sharply under economic pressure.

Major cities have also seen dramatic declines, Istanbul has fallen from 1.77 to 1.08, Ankara from 1.68 to 1.06, and Izmir from 1.57 to 1.06, due to the combined effects of high living costs and urban lifestyle pressures.

Posted by Accomplished_Gur4368

25 comments

  1. Urfa holding out because it also has the highest inbreeding rates.

  2. This is just an approximate GDP graph right?

    Wealthy, highly educated people prioritize their careers over children so they have less children, later in life.

  5. Could it be because everyone stopped calling it Turkey?

  6. Color ramp should be reversed. Alternately, a single-color ramp would be perfectly acceptable in this case.

  7. At some point we have to think what is the maximum amount of people the planet should hold. We are at 8 billion people and it’s very crowded and polluted already.

  9. Animals reproduce less when a decline in resources is perceived. Humans are animals. Draw your own conclusions.

  10. basically same thing is happening in Thailand and Mexico. Anywhere with medium incomes fertility just fell through the floor.

    in high income countries the same thing happened, just more slowly.

  11. Nothing to do with economics, 176cm average male height is the issue, women should not have to deal with males below 190cm. Men should do better.

  12. Remember this: the main economic reasons are very expensive houses/appartements and very long educational process (universities). This explains why with lower incomes people had more children . The rest is rather secondary 

  13. Anyone know where the island of dark blue is in the south east? Assume there’s some reason for it being such an outlier.

  14. The 1.56 province in the east of Turkey in 2009 is because its a very secular province. Stricter religion = more children

  17. I can hear the people “it is not the turkish! It is the immigrants (from syria) that is breeding!!!!” (I am from turkiye and from gaziantep to be specific. The city which is on the left of that blue one on the second image)

  19. I’m super fascinated by this question

    >The main reason is economic, rising living costs, unstable jobs, expensive housing and childcare, and declining real incomes.

    I don’t think it’s this simple.

    Firstly because this an international phenomenon happening in many countries at the same time all of which have really different economic situations. For instance the Nordic countries have healthy economies, low unemployment, universal healthcare, cheap childcare, long parental leave and affordable housing and still have crashing birth-rates.

    Secondly because the economic conditions in the past were much much worse, 150 years ago people would have 11 poeple living in a house with 4 rooms in a city and humans were still willing to reproduce in those conditions so saying the conditions now are impossible doesn’t really make sense.

    Thirdly countries that have tried offering birth incentives haven’t found it that successful. Hungary offered 6% of GDP as cash handouts to people willing to have children and the birth-rate only went up a little and that was mostly children pulled forward who would have been born anyway. If economics were the main reason then cash handouts should be extremely effective.

    I think this is an incredibly complicated situation but essentially the economic situation now is much much better than it was 50 years ago and so that is not enough to explain why birth-rates are crashing globally.

  20. Since only females can get pregnant, the focus ought to be on their changing attitudes. As female education becomes more prevalent, choices become more available for them between working and bearing a child, as they discriminate more among the men who wish to mate with them, as they put off pregnancies so that they can enjoy being unencumbered by a child, all of this reduces total fertility rate.

  22. Turkey lags behind the European population pyramid, but the rate of change varies. The 19th-century European Industrial Revolution saw a population boom, while in Türkiye this occurred between 1920 and 1980. In Europe, fertility rates dropped to an average of 3-4 in the 1950s, compared to Turkey in the 1990s. Europe reached 2-3 in the 1980s, while Turkey did so in the 2000s. Europe dropped below 2.00 in the 2000s, while Turkey did so at the end of the 2010s. Today, fertility rates are at an equal level, or even lower than some European countries.

    The pandemic has affected birth rates worldwide, but the impact is more pronounced in Türkiye. Furthermore, the 2023 earthquake affected regions with high birth rates in Türkiye, contributing to negative divergence.

    Factors influencing birth rates include the average age of first marriage, urbanization, and women’s participation in the workforce. Turkey has lagged behind Western Europe in these areas by sometimes 150 years, sometimes 50 years, sometimes 20 years. Today, this is the same for most countries.

    If the Turkish economy improves, there is a possibility of a slight increase. Türkiye is still very young compared to Western Europe. Despite this fertility rate, Türkiye’s population will not decrease until 2047. The decline will begin after 2047.

  23. Man, people really don’t know how to use the greater-than symbol. It’s “>”.

  24. You need more children when you work on agriculture, and agriculture is almost dead. Minimum wage is under the hunger limit and 70% works for minimum wage or less. Erd*gan is the ruler for the last 25 years. There may be more reasons like education / city life etc. but that probably effects 5% or less.

  25. The world had 1 billion people in the 1800s. We came from there, we are going to there. No need to panic. It’s okay.

    Only the capitalist, labor exploiting, warmongering, create-more-displaced-people-to-import-into-the-west-for-slave-wages scum need more people so they can enslave.

    The reason they don’t want abortion is the same, not caring about a “life” but that child may wind up one day in their factories.

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