In 1925, the crude birth rate in South Africa was just under 49 births per thousand people, meaning that almost five percent of the population was born in that year. This figure would follow the country’s trends in fertility, remaining largely unchanged until the 1950s when, following the implementation of apartheid rule in the country in 1948, declines in fertility from the government's family planning programs would lead to the birth rate's rapid decline. Apart from a brief pause in the early-1980s, births rates would decline throughout the second half of the 20th century, falling to just under 24 births per thousand people by 2000. The crude birth rate would see a brief increase in the early 2000s, largely attributed to a diversion of healthcare funding away from contraceptives to funding for treatments for the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the country, but since then, birth rates have resumed their decline, and in 2020, it is estimated that South Africa had a birth rate just under 21 births for every thousand people.

In 2023, the crude birth rate in live births per 1,000 inhabitants in South Africa was 18.78. Between 1960 and 2023, the figure dropped by 21.04, though the decline followed an uneven course rather than a steady trajectory.

South Africa ZA: Fertility Rate: Total: Births per Woman data was reported at 2.458 Ratio in 2016. This records a decrease from the previous number of 2.485 Ratio for 2015. South Africa ZA: Fertility Rate: Total: Births per Woman data is updated yearly, averaging 3.924 Ratio from Dec 1960 (Median) to 2016, with 57 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 6.041 Ratio in 1960 and a record low of 2.458 Ratio in 2016. South Africa ZA: Fertility Rate: Total: Births per Woman data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s South Africa – Table ZA.World Bank.WDI: Health Statistics. Total fertility rate represents the number of children that would be born to a woman if she were to live to the end of her childbearing years and bear children in accordance with age-specific fertility rates of the specified year.; ; (1) United Nations Population Division. World Population Prospects: 2017 Revision. (2) Census reports and other statistical publications from national statistical offices, (3) Eurostat: Demographic Statistics, (4) United Nations Statistical Division. Population and Vital Statistics Reprot (various years), (5) U.S. Census Bureau: International Database, and (6) Secretariat of the Pacific Community: Statistics and Demography Programme.; Weighted average; Relevance to gender indicator: it can indicate the status of women within households and a woman’s decision about the number and spacing of children.

In 2024, the fertility rate in Africa was *** children per woman. The average number of newborn infants per woman on the continent decreased compared to 2000, when women had approximately **** children throughout their reproductive years. By 2030, fertility in Africa is projected to decline to around *** births per woman, yet it will remain high. The highest fertility rate worldwide Despite its gradually declining rate, fertility in Africa is the highest in the world. In 2023, the average fertility rate on the continent stood at **** children per woman, compared to a global average of **** births per woman. In contrast, Europe and North America were the continents with the lowest proportion of newborns, each registering a fertility rate below two children per woman. Additionally, Africa records the highest fertility rate among the young female population aged 15 to 19 years. In 2022, West and Central Africa had an adolescent fertility rate of nearly *** children per 1,000 girls, the highest value worldwide. Lower fertility in Northern Africa Fertility levels vary significantly across Africa. In 2023, Somalia, Chad, Niger, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic were the countries with the highest fertility rates on the continent. In those countries, women had an average of over *** children in their reproductive years. The number of adolescent girls giving birth also differed within Africa. For instance, the adolescent fertility rate in North Africa stood at around **** children per 1,000 young women in 2023. On the other hand, Sub-Saharan Africa registered a higher rate of approximately **** children per 1,000 girls as of the same year. In general, higher poverty levels, inadequate social and health conditions, and increased infant mortality are some main drivers of higher fertility rates.

The total fertility rate represents the average number of children that a woman will have over the course of their reproductive years. In South Africa in the early-1920s, the average woman would have 6.5 children over the course of their reproductive years, a rate that would remain fairly constant until 1950. From this point until 2005, South Africa’s fertility rate would drop consistently, and would reach 2.9 children per woman by the beginning of the 21st century. There was a slight increase in fertility in 2005, largely attributed to a diversion of healthcare funding away from contraceptives to funding for treatments for the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the country, however, the fertility rate would again decrease in the years following this. In 2020, the total fertility rate for South Africa is estimated to be just 2.41 children per woman, a rate much lower than most other Sub-Saharan countries.

A flexible model to reconstruct education-specific fertility rates: Sub-saharan Africa case study

The fertility rates are consistent with the United Nation World Population Prospects (UN WPP) 2022 fertility rates.

The Bayesian model developed to reconstruct the fertility rates using Demographic and Health Surveys and the UN WPP is published in a working paper.

Abstract

The future world population growth and size will be largely determined by the pace of fertility decline in sub-Saharan Africa. Correct estimates of education-specific fertility rates are crucial for projecting the future population. Yet, consistent cross-country comparable estimates of education-specific fertility for sub-Saharan African countries are still lacking. We propose a flexible Bayesian hierarchical model to reconstruct education-specific fertility rates by using the patchy Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) data and the United Nations’ (UN) reliable estimates of total fertility rates (TFR). Our model produces estimates that match the UN TFR to different extents (in other words, estimates of varying levels of consistency with the UN). We present three model specifications: consistent but not identical with the UN, fully-consistent (nearly identical) with the UN, and consistent with the DHS. Further, we provide a full time series of education-specific TFR estimates covering five-year periods between 1980 and 2014 for 36 sub-Saharan African countries. The results show that the DHS-consistent estimates are usually higher than the UN-fully-consistent ones. The differences between the three model estimates vary substantially in size across countries, yielding 1980-2014 fertility trends that differ from each other mostly in level only but in some cases also in direction.

Funding

The data set are part of the BayesEdu Project at Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital (IIASA, OeAW, University of Vienna) funded from the “Innovation Fund Research, Science and Society” by the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW).

We provide education-specific total fertility rates (ESTFR) from three model specifications: (1) estimated TFR consistent but not identical with the TFR estimated by the UN (“Main model (UN-consistent)”; (2) estimated TFR fully consistent (nearly identical) with the TFR estimated by the UN ( “UN-fully -consistent”, and (3) estimated TFR consistent only with the TFR estimated by the DHS ( “DHS-consistent”).

For education- and age-specific fertility rates that are UN-fully consistent, please see https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8182960

Variables

Country: Country names

Education: Four education levels, No Education, Primary Education, Secondary Education and Higher Education.

Year: Five-year periods between 1980 and 2015.

ESTFR: Median education-specific total fertility rate estimate

sd: Standard deviation

Upp50: 50% Upper Credible Interval

Lwr50: 50% Lower Credible Interval

Upp80: 80% Upper Credible Interval

Lwr80: 80% Lower Credible Interval

Model: Three model specifications as explained above and in the working paper. DHS-consistent, Main model (UN-consistent) and UN-fully consistent.

List of countries:

Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cote D'Ivoire, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Somalia was the African country with the highest fertility rate in 2023. There, each woman had an average of around 6.1 children in her reproductive years. Fertility levels in Africa remain high despite a steady decline The fertility rate in Africa has gradually decreased since 2000 and is projected to decline further in the coming years. Factors including improved socio-economic conditions and educational opportunities, lower infant mortality, and decreasing poverty levels have driven the declining birth rate on the continent. Nevertheless, Africa remains the continent with the highest fertility rate worldwide. As of 2023, women in Africa had an average of 4.07 children in their reproductive years. Africa was the only continent registering a fertility rate higher than the global average, which was set at 2.4 children per woman. Worldwide, the continent also had the highest adolescent fertility rate as of 2022, with West and Central Africa leading with 105 births per 1,000 girls aged 15 to 19 years. Africa’s population keeps growing According to projections, over 46 million births will be registered in Africa in 2023. Contrary to the declining fertility rate, the absolute number of births on the continent will continue to grow in the coming years to reach around 49.4 million by 2030. In general, Africa’s population – amounting to over 1.48 billion inhabitants as of 2023 – is forecast to increase considerably and achieve 2.5 billion in 2050. Countries such as Niger, Angola, and Equatorial Guinea are key drivers of population growth in Africa, registering the highest average population growth rate on the continent between 2020 and 2025. For instance, in that period, Niger’s population was forecast to expand by 3.7 percent each year.

In 2023, the total fertility rate in children per woman in South Africa was 2.22. Between 1960 and 2023, the figure dropped by 3.89, though the decline followed an uneven course rather than a steady trajectory.

Since 2000, Russia has consistently had the lowest population growth rate of the BRICS countries, and it even experienced a population decline throughout most of the 2000s, and again in the late 2010s. For Brazil, China, and India, population growth has gradually fallen over time, as their demographic development progresses. South Africa has had the highest population growth rate since 2010, as its population recovered from the initial impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, before it started falling as birth rates fall more in line with death rates.

As of 2022, over 998 thousand births were registered in South Africa, which demonstrates a decrease from close to 1.1 million registered births in the previous year. During the period in review, the number of births was highest in 2003 and lowest in 2016 at almost 1.7 million and 969 thousand births, respectively.

This paper investigates the effect of under-five mortality, child support grant (CSG) coverage and the rollout of antiretroviral therapy (ART) on fertility in South Africa. The study employs the quality-quantity trade-off framework to analyse the direct and indirect factors affecting fertility using the two stage least squares fixed effects instrumental variable approach. The analysis uses balanced panel data covering nine provinces from 2001–2016. This period was characterised by significant increases in the child support grant coverage and ART coverage. Furthermore, this period was characterised by a significant decline in the under-five mortality rate. We find no evidence to support the hypothesis that increases in the CSG coverage are associated with an increase in fertility. This finding aligns with previous literature suggesting that there are no perverse incentives for childbearing associated with the child support grant. On the other hand, results indicate that an increase in ART coverage is associated with an increase in fertility. Results also show that a decrease in under-five mortality is associated with a decline in fertility over the sample period. HIV prevalence, education, real GDP per capita, marriage prevalence and contraceptive prevalence are also important determinants of fertility in South Africa. Although the scale up of ART has improved health outcomes, it also appears to have increased fertility in HIV-positive women. The ART programme should therefore be linked with further family planning initiatives to minimise unintended pregnancies.

In 2022, the child mortality rate of South Africa was around 35 deaths per thousand live births, meaning that for every thousand children born in South Africa that year, about 35 would not survive past their fifth birthday. However, child mortality in the country has followed a gradual declining trend since 2012.

In the mid-20th century, the infant mortality rate of South Africa was estimated to be just over 130 deaths per thousand live births, meaning that almost one in seven infants born at that time would not survive past their first birthday. Infant mortality in South Africa would steadily decline for most of the late-1900s, falling to just over forty deaths per thousand live births by the early 1990s. However, with the outbreak of the the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the late 1990s, infant mortality would gradually rise in the country until improvements in HIV treatment and prevention would allow for infant mortality to decline from 2005 onwards. As South Africa continues to improve access to healthcare, it is estimated that, in 2020, over 97 percent of all infants will make it past their first birthday.

The world's population first reached one billion people in 1805, and reached eight billion in 2022, and will peak at almost 10.2 billion by the end of the century. Although it took thousands of years to reach one billion people, it did so at the beginning of a phenomenon known as the demographic transition; from this point onwards, population growth has skyrocketed, and since the 1960s the population has increased by one billion people every 12 to 15 years. The demographic transition sees a sharp drop in mortality due to factors such as vaccination, sanitation, and improved food supply; the population boom that follows is due to increased survival rates among children and higher life expectancy among the general population; and fertility then drops in response to this population growth. Regional differences The demographic transition is a global phenomenon, but it has taken place at different times across the world. The industrialized countries of Europe and North America were the first to go through this process, followed by some states in the Western Pacific. Latin America's population then began growing at the turn of the 20th century, but the most significant period of global population growth occurred as Asia progressed in the late-1900s. As of the early 21st century, almost two-thirds of the world's population lives in Asia, although this is set to change significantly in the coming decades. Future growth The growth of Africa's population, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, will have the largest impact on global demographics in this century. From 2000 to 2100, it is expected that Africa's population will have increased by a factor of almost five. It overtook Europe in size in the late 1990s, and overtook the Americas a few years later. In contrast to Africa, Europe's population is now in decline, as birth rates are consistently below death rates in many countries, especially in the south and east, resulting in natural population decline. Similarly, the population of the Americas and Asia are expected to go into decline in the second half of this century, and only Oceania's population will still be growing alongside Africa. By 2100, the world's population will have over three billion more than today, with the vast majority of this concentrated in Africa. Demographers predict that climate change is exacerbating many of the challenges that currently hinder progress in Africa, such as political and food instability; if Africa's transition is prolonged, then it may result in further population growth that would place a strain on the region's resources, however, curbing this growth earlier would alleviate some of the pressure created by climate change.

In 2024, the population of Africa was projected to grow by 2.27 percent compared to the previous year. The population growth rate on the continent has been constantly over 2.5 percent from 2000 onwards, and it peaked at 2.63 percent in 2013. Despite a slowdown in the growth rate after that, the continent's population will continue to increase significantly in the coming years. The second-largest population worldwide In 2023, the total population of Africa amounted to almost 1.5 billion. The number of inhabitants had grown steadily in the previous decades, rising from approximately 831 million in 2000. Driven by a decreasing mortality rate and a higher life expectancy at birth, the African population was forecast to increase to about 2.5 billion individuals by 2050. Africa is currently the second most populous continent worldwide after Asia. However, forecasts showed that Africa could gradually close the gap and almost reach the size of the Asian population in 2100. By that year, Africa might count 3.8 billion people, compared to 4.6 billion in Asia. The world's youngest continent The median age in Africa corresponded to 19.2 years in 2024. Although the median age has increased in recent years, the continent remains the youngest worldwide. In 2023, roughly 40 percent of the African population was aged 15 years and younger, compared to a global average of 25 percent. Africa recorded not only the highest share of youth but also the smallest elderly population worldwide. As of the same year, only three percent of Africa's population was aged 65 years and older. Africa and Latin America were the only regions below the global average of ten percent. On the continent, Niger, Uganda, and Angola were the countries with the youngest population in 2023.

Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander women had the highest fertility rate of any ethnicity in the United States in 2022, with about 2,237.5 births per 1,000 women. The fertility rate for all ethnicities in the U.S. was 1,656.5 births per 1,000 women. What is the total fertility rate? The total fertility rate is an estimation of the number of children who would theoretically be born per 1,000 women through their childbearing years (generally considered to be between the ages of 15 and 44) according to age-specific fertility rates. The fertility rate is different from the birth rate, in that the birth rate is the number of births in relation to the population over a specific period of time. Fertility rates around the world Fertility rates around the world differ on a country-by-country basis, and more industrialized countries tend to see lower fertility rates. For example, Niger topped the list of the countries with the highest fertility rates, and Taiwan had the lowest fertility rate.

Median and interquartile range of the years elapsed between the urban and rural onsets of advanced fertility decline, cohorts 1896–1982 in 50 African, Asian and Latin American countries.

As of 2023, the total population of Africa was over 1.48 billion. The number of inhabitants on the continent increased annually from 2000 onwards. In comparison, the total population was around 831 million in 2000. According to forecasts, Africa will experience impressive population growth in the coming years and will close the gap with the Asian population by 2100. Over 200 million people in Nigeria Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa. In 2025, the country’s population exceeded 237 million people. Ethiopia followed with a population of around 135 million, while Egypt ranked third, accounting for approximately 118 million individuals. Other leading African countries in terms of population were the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, South Africa, and Kenya. Additionally, Niger, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Chad recorded the highest population growth rate on the continent in 2023, with the number of residents rising by over 3.08 percent compared to the previous year. On the other hand, the populations of Tunisia and Eswatini registered a growth rate below 0.85 percent, while for Mauritius and Seychelles, it was negative. Drivers for population growth Several factors have driven Africa’s population growth. For instance, the annual number of births on the continent has risen constantly over the years, jumping from nearly 32 million in 2000 to almost 46 million in 2023. Moreover, despite the constant decline in the number of births per woman, the continent’s fertility rate has remained considerably above the global average. Each woman in Africa had an average of over four children throughout her reproductive years as of 2023, compared to a world rate of around two births per woman. At the same time, improved health and living conditions contributed to decreasing mortality rate and increasing life expectancy in recent years, driving population growth.

According to the forecast, Africa's total population would reach nearly 2.5 billion by 2050. In 2025, the continent had around 1.55 billion inhabitants, with Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Egypt as the most populous countries. In the coming years, Africa will experience significant population growth and will close the gap significantly with the Asian population by 2100. Rapid population growth In Africa, the annual growth rate of the population followed an overall increasing trend up to 2013, reaching nearly 2.63 percent. This was followed by a drop to 2.32 percent by 2023. Although population growth was slowing down, it was still growing faster than in all other regions. The reasons behind this rapid growth are various. One factor is the high fertility rate registered in African countries. In 2023, a woman in Somalia, Chad, Niger, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic had an average of over six children in her reproductive years, the highest rate on the continent. High fertility resulted in a large young population and partly compensated for the high mortality rate in Africa, leading to fast-paced population growth. High poverty levels Africa’s population is concerned with widespread poverty. In 2025, over 438 million people on the continent are extremely poor and live with less than 2.15 U.S. dollars per day. Globally, Africa is the continent hosting the highest poverty rate. In 2025, the countries of Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo account for over 23 percent of the world's population living in extreme poverty. Nevertheless, the share of the population living in poverty in Africa is forecast to decrease in the coming years.

In 1800, the population of modern day area of South Africa was approximately 1.44 million. Like most of the continent, the population of South Africa increased gradually through most of the 19th century, reaching 4.71 million by the start of the 20th century. Beginning in the 20th century however, the population would begin to rise exponentially as industrialization, advances in medicine and health, and the spread of vaccinations allowed for lower child mortality rates and increased life expectancy among adults. The population of South Africa would continue to rise exponentially for almost a century, going from just under 5 million at the start of the 1900s to almost 45 million by 2000. However, since the early 2000s, South Africa’s population growth has slowed, the result of a significant decrease in fertility rates in the country in recent years. In 2020, South Africa is estimated to have a population of 59.31 million.