Diene Keita and Alessio Cangiano (UNFPA) on the launch of UNFPA's new global report on the findings of Demographic Futures Survey - Press Conference

Great.
We're delighted to be joined by Diene Keita, who, as you know, is the Executive Director of UNFPA and with her is Alessio Cangiano, chief ad interim of the Population Development branch at UNFPA and they're here to present to you the New Democratic Futures Survey.
Diene, please.
Thank you so much, Stéphane.
Good afternoon.
Thank you all for having us.
Ahead of World Population Day this coming Saturday, UNFPA has launched a new report, Lives, choices and future.
What young people want and what shapes their decisions about relationship and parenthood.
It is based on our demographic future survey, which comes at a moment when debates about population change are growing louder and more divided.
In many places, we are concerned about declining marriage rates and falling fertility.
Too often, young people are blamed for turning away from partnership and parenthood.
The demographic Future survey starts somewhere else.
It helps fill a critical global evidence gap, bringing together the voices and experience of more than 100,000 people Across 73 countries, one of the largest and most comprehensive surveys of its kind.
We asked them what they want when it comes to relationship, children, and the future and what they feel is standing in the way of fulfilling their aspirations.
The findings are striking.
Most young people aspire to partnership and parenthood, but many do not feel the conditions are in place to achieve these goals.
Economic and housing constraint were the most commonly seated barriers to both partnership and having children.
Some people have suggested that younger generation are rejecting marriage and family life, but our data shows this is simply not true.
Two thirds of the respondents say their ideal relationship involves marriage, yet among those aged 25-39 who want to have a partner, one quarter are single and not dating.
Most respondents said they want to have children with two children the most commonly reported ideal family size.
Financial security top the list of conditions young adults say they need to feel ready for parenthood.
This was cited as important by 88% of the respondent.
Stable employment followed closely at 87% and emotional readiness at 85%.
They are asking for the condition that would make real choice possible decent work, affordable housing, healthcare, sexual and productive health services, childcare support, parental leave, and gender equality at work and at home.
Simply put, it is uncertainty, not unwillingness that is making young people question whether they can start a family.
That uncertainty is not only economic.
For many young people, conflict and insecurity also shape whether the future feels safe enough to plan for a family and that distinction matter.
If we misread the problem, we risk designing the wrong solution.
Many countries are worried about falling fertility, population aging, shrinking workforces, and pressure on care systems.
These are real concern.
They matter for economies, public services, and society's future prospects.
Demographic change is really about more than birth rate.
It is about how society changing as people have children later, live longer, move, migrate, and form families in different ways.
But as we know, demographic futures are not set in stone.
They are shaped by the policies we choose, the investment we make, and the opportunity we create.
This is the principle that has guided UNFPA for decades.
Everybody should be able to decide freely and responsibly whether when and with whom to form a family free from coercion, discrimination, and unnecessary barrier.
Of course, those shifts affect schools, hospitals, jobs, housing, care system, and public financing.
This is exactly the kind of work UNFPA has a role to play in.
We help countries understand these changes clearly and respond with evidence and right based solution, not assumption.
Hence the survey.
Although it is clear that young people are worried, but they are not without hope, two thirds of the respondents say they feel positive about the future.
Even as conflict, economic insecurity, and inequality rank among the top concerns.
The right based response to demographic change is about ensuring every person has the agency, the support and opportunity to make some of the most intimate and consequential decision of their lives.
That drive the work we do in helping government strengthen population data, understanding the demographic trends and development data based population policy that uphold right and expand choice.
We know there is something that is important to mention here.
All these issues are deeply, deeply political.
This is precisely why open evidence based dialogue is so important.
Now, here, more than 100,000 young people have spoken.
It is time to listen and the fragmented world with shrinking resources.
We need future generation to thrive for people and for the planet.
But let me give for a few minutes the floor to the mind behind the data, my colleague, Alessio.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for this opportunity.
Let me provide a few additional observations on the relevance of this project and on the key findings of the report.
First, let me highlight that until now, there has been very little comparable data directly capturing young people's own choices and perspectives across such a diverse set of countries.
This survey contributes to filling this gap, generating new evidence on an early stage of the life course, the transition into adulthood.
This is a time when aspirations, concerns, circumstances are still prospective.
The survey examines the context in which these transitions are embedded.
Its broad geographical scope enables a cross national comparison of Internet connected young adults across old world regions.
The survey also incorporates a range of emerging and relatively unexplored factors that might shape young people decision making.
For example, housing constraints, environmental concerns, and the daily patterns of social media use.
Ultimately, as emphasized by our ID, the survey gave voice to more than 100,000 young people.
It's now up to us to listen to them.
EPA, we are committed to doing our part in ensuring that this evidence directly inform forward looking rights based policies and programs that support young people in achieving their desired futures.
With regard to the survey findings, I would like to elaborate on two aspects.
The first is the gap between parenthood aspirations and realities.
Um, our idea has already highlighted that our data does not support the idea that a desire for children has vanished.
In fact, in five out of seven regional groupings, a two child family size remains the highest rated lifetime ideal.
Three or four children are cited most frequently in Western Central Africa, and Eastern and Southern Africa.
An ideal of three children is more frequently reported than an ideal of zero or one, also in all other regional groupings.
Yet, when we look at our respondent group aged 35 to 39, those who have basically nearly completed their reproductive age, we found that the average number of children that they have is lower than the average reported ideal lifetime family size.
Further, we looked at the subset of respondents in this group who have no children, and we found that the large majority of these individuals are not child free by choice.
72% of child free women and nearly 80% of child free men aged 35 to 39 explicitly reported that they ideally wish to have children.
The second part I want to highlight a bit more is the gender dimension of the findings.
Me ideally family size is higher amongst male than female respondents in all regional settings.
Female respondents are more likely than male respondents to rate as very important all preconditions for parenthood and barriers to having children with the largest differences observed for health and reproductive concerns.
Respondents are also more likely to disapprove of women than men working full time while raising the children.
The report does not directly examines the reasons for these differences, but these findings suggest that gender equity in both the home and labor market remains an important consideration in policy discussions related to family formation and demographic change.
There is, of course, a wealth of additional findings in the report and I encourage you to read it.
Look out for the regional reports that will be published later this year if you're interested in more country level data and analysis.
We look forward to your questions.
Thanks very much.
I'll now turn the floor over for questions.
Yes, please.
Thank you very much for this briefing.
My name is Noreen Hossain with IPS News.
You've mentioned that you surveyed over 108,000 Internet connected people.
I wanted to ask what does that mean exactly? Does that have to do with how the survey was conducted or what is that distinction for exactly, just to start with? Yes, we chose this methodology because we used basically companies that have online panels from which we can promptly collect data in a large number of countries.
These are companies that have a global outreach, and therefore, the advantage of this approach was that we could quickly collect this data, and it was also fairly cheap to collect this data.
So it was an approach that was highly cost effective.
This comes, of course, with some limitations as any survey approach.
Of course, we don't claim to have national representative data for all countries, particularly because we have some countries with relatively low Internet connectivity where we know that those connected are selected group of respondents that typically represent the parts of the population with a higher social status.
In that sense, that is the caution that we need as we look at the data and how we interpret them.
Okay.
Yes Taosu.
My name is hang from Xinua.
Did you find any geographic imbalance in the willingness of having children, for example, in developed regions in developing regions in Africa, for example, North America? Yes.
As I mentioned, the ideal family size changes quite a bit.
We have five of our seven regional groupings where the ideal family size is two, essentially.
Well, the most reported, then of course, some people would like to have three, some one, that's of course normal.
In east and Southern Africa and in Western and Central Africa, the most reported ideal family size is three or four depending on the countries.
I think that is the most remarkable difference that we observed.
Is there a follow up.
Is there an explanation for this difference? Did you do any analysis for this difference? This is fully consistent with what we know about the stages of the demographic transition in the different countries.
We have essentially collected data from a very diverse set of countries that we know in some context, fertility is higher, in some contexts, fertility is lower.
In some it has declined very rapidly.
So obviously, we need to take into account this diversity.
The data we have actually reflect this diversity that is entirely expected.
Of course, further analysis is also possible to look at the contextual factors that affect the different preferences.
Okay.
Even Evelyn Leopold, thank you for the briefing.
It's fascinating.
Where can one see the report? Can you give us the URL for it? Of course.
And secondly, in families that have more than three children, what's the reason for that? Are they afraid one might die? Do they need them for labor or well, what did you find? The report did not look at the factors of the why people have different preferences for families.
As I think every research, we start collecting new data that provides some results that answer some questions that raise other questions.
I think this is one of the other questions that looking at the findings, it's definitely something worthwhile further.
Investigation.
This the why question, I think it's really what we are considering as a follow up for the analysis of the data we have collected.
Noreen again.
Thank you.
I have at least one more question.
Who is this report intended for? In terms of based on the data that's been collected and the findings from the report, you should be the report apart from Aster and Lisa and anybody in the system? The report is intended for everyone, starting first by the researcher.
As I said at the very beginning, this is the first report of its kind.
If it's Internet connected, it allows to really pinpoint data that we didn't have before and we have been working very long time now on young people aspiration and what they want.
This is the first of its kind.
But ultimately, the report is intended to government, member states to help shape policies for their demographic transition, demographic future.
Mainly.
But so far since it's a very beginning of it, it's a way to continue the studies regionally and then sometime by country as well because countries are requesting for it.
Some member states, some donors are behind this report, finance it, some foundation as well, just to ensure that we can continue deepening the issues because there are so many there are science behind it, but there are values and cultural aspiration behind it as well.
To what you said about that you worked with several companies to collect the data and to reach out to surveys.
Can you share some of the companies that you worked with? Yes.
These were Caner Light Speed and Geopol.
I have one more question.
Sorry.
Among the data collection, were there any other trends or perhaps disparities between male and female respondents when it came to parental responsibilities or gender roles, for example, and were there any differences between regions as well? The main differences is what I already mentioned.
There are quite marked differences when it comes to some gender norms and expectations in the labor market, in particular, the idea that women work while they have young children.
I think that was definitely one.
The other factor that emerged, it was quite cross cutting in many of the questions is that for all the barriers and preconditions, we asked for, what are the preconditions for having children for you? What are the most important preconditions? Of course, they could rate the preconditions.
Women always rated the preconditions as higher than men.
The same thing when we talk about, what are the key barriers that you face? Same thing.
Women always rated this barrier higher than men.
So Clearly, I think the data show that they face more the pressure of these decisions than men.
I think that is the overall conclusion.
Then why this is the case, again, we haven't got to the point where we have analyzed the factors shaping these differences.
Any further questions? Are there any questions online? Okay.
If not, I would like once more to thank our guests, Diene Keita, the UNFPA Executive Director, and Alessio Cangiano, the chief ad interim of the Population and Development branch of UNFPA.
Thanks very much and thank you all for coming.
Have a great afternoon.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.