Czech Birth Rate Collapses to 18th-Century Levels: What It Means for the Country

Only 77,600 children were born in Czechia in 2025 — the lowest number since 1785, according to demographic data. The average fertility rate (children per woman) has fallen to 1.28, down from 1.83 in 2020–2021, which at the time was one of the highest rates in Europe.

Back then, Czechia was hailed as a "demographic star pupil," having reversed the sharp decline of the late 1990s, when fertility dropped as low as 1.13. Yet within just a few years the trend has swung dramatically in the other direction — the decline has now continued for four years running, affecting every region of the country and every age group of women. Experts say this is not a temporary blip but a structural shift in Czechs' reproductive behaviour.

The number of newborns has fallen by roughly a third compared with 2021. Experts link the collapse to a string of shocks in recent years. Security in Europe has deteriorated sharply, with the largest armed conflict since the Second World War raging just a few hundred kilometres from Czechia's borders. According to UNIQA insurance company's "Big Family Survey," 60% of respondents admitted they are afraid of the kind of world they would be bringing children into.

The energy crisis, which began in 2021 and worsened in 2022 when Russia all but cut off gas supplies to Europe, also played a role. Inflation approached 20% in 2022, driving down real wages. At the same time, interest rates rose and mortgages became more expensive — making housing, already hard to afford, even less accessible. Experts say housing and financial costs are precisely the factors that weigh most heavily on the decision to have a second child.

As a result, the country's fertility rate now barely exceeds one child per woman — far below the 2.1 children per woman needed for a population to naturally replace itself.

Demographers warn that the consequences won't be immediate, but they will be serious. In twenty years, the Czech economy will face a shortage of workers — a problem that is already being felt today. The country has been through something similar before, when the large postwar generation began leaving the labour market without being fully replaced by the smaller generation born in the 1990s: between 2015 and 2021, the number of residents aged 15–64 fell from nearly seven million to 6.65 million. Since 2022, the working-age population has been growing again, largely thanks to migration from Ukraine.

Back then, the fallout included an overheated labour market, staff shortages, declining quality of public services, pressure on the pension system, and rising migration. Over the coming decade, the large generation born during the era of Gustáv Husák will gradually start retiring, further intensifying all of these problems. Analysts note that today's drop in birth rates may still look like a distant threat, but in the long run it could create serious difficulties for the Czech economy.

Around Prague, based on reporting by seznamzpravy.cz