Just one in four EU households has children

Brussels – Children, the great unknown. In the EU, there are none, and families with kids are practically a rarity. Eurostat released figures updated to 2024, which are, in fact, yet another census of the increasingly structural problem of declining birth rates: just under one in four families in the EU has children. The European Statistical Institute calculates that just 23.6 percent of the 202 million households in the EU had at least one boy or girl living at home, while the remaining 76.4 percent had none. 

The most worrying figure is perhaps the performance of the best Member State: Slovakia. It has the highest rate of households with children at the end of 2024, with the index standing at 35.6 percent of the total. Practically two-thirds of the national households have no children.

The problem also concerns, perhaps most of all, Italy, which ranks at the lowest positions for the index of families with children, standing at 22.2 percent. This value puts the country below the EU average and in 22nd place for childbearing. The situation captured by Eurostat in 2024 is not much different for Italy than what was recorded in 2017, confirming that the challenges remain largely unresolved.

However, as noted, the problem is broader and not limited to Italy alone. In addition to the absence of a parenting culture, the concept of a “large family” also appears to be lacking. Eurostat notes that in 2024, “families with one child were predominant in all EU countries” except the Netherlands, where the share of families with two children was higher. Specifically, at the end of last year, among households with children, nearly half (49.8 percent) had one child, 37.6 percent two, and 12.6 percent three or more.