Countries by Fertility rate, total (births per woman)
Somalia, Fed. Rep. ranks first in total fertility rate with 6.132 births per woman in 2023, followed closely by Chad at 6.12 and Niger at 6.061. At the opposite end, Macao SAR, China records 0.586, less than one-tenth of Somalia's figure. The gap between rank 1 and rank 216 spans a range of more than 5.5 births per woman across 216 countries.
Ranking 2023
Analysis
Total fertility rate measures 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. The unit is an absolute value expressed as births per woman. A higher value indicates more births per woman; higher is treated as better for ranking purposes in this dataset. Data for this metric are drawn from the World Bank World Development Indicators, indicator code SP.DYN.TFRT.IN, for the reference year 2023. Coverage is broad: 216 countries are included, all with data from within the last seven years, and 100% of datapoints are classified as official-quality. The viability check identified 19 extreme outliers at the 3-sigma threshold, and the overall range spans 0.586 to 6.132, a spread of 946.4%. Average year-over-year change across the dataset is 2.5%, well within the stability threshold.
The ten highest-ranked countries are all in Sub-Saharan Africa or the Middle East and South Asia. Somalia, Fed. Rep. (rank 1, 6.132), Chad (rank 2, 6.12), Niger (rank 3, 6.061), Congo, Dem. Rep. (rank 4, 6.051), and Central African Republic (rank 5, 6.012) form a tight cluster above 6.0 births per woman. Mali (rank 6, 5.614) and Angola (rank 7, 5.124) follow. Burundi (rank 8, 4.878), Afghanistan (rank 9, 4.84), and Mozambique (rank 10, 4.763) round out the top ten. The top 25 are drawn entirely from Sub-Saharan Africa, with Afghanistan and Yemen, Rep. (rank 13, 4.59) as the only countries from outside that region in the top 30.
The middle of the ranking, roughly ranks 80 to 130, contains a mix of Latin American, Middle Eastern, and Southeast Asian countries with fertility rates between approximately 1.7 and 2.5 births per woman. Israel (rank 59, 2.85) stands out among high-income nations as notably above the replacement-level range. At the lower end of the ranking, most Western European nations cluster between 1.3 and 1.6. South Korea (rank 215, 0.721) and Hong Kong SAR, China (rank 214, 0.751) are the only two countries below 0.8, with Macao SAR, China (rank 216, 0.586) recording the lowest value globally. China (rank 210, 0.999) and Singapore (rank 212, 0.97) also fall below 1.0. Ukraine (rank 211, 0.977) is notable as the only European country in this sub-1.0 group.
Total fertility rate is a period measure based on age-specific rates in a single year, not actual completed family sizes for any cohort of women. It can be sensitive to changes in the timing of births: if women delay childbearing, the period rate may temporarily understate likely lifetime fertility. Conversely, if births are concentrated in certain age groups in a given year, the rate may be temporarily elevated. Countries with small populations, conflict-affected registration systems, or limited civil registration infrastructure may have rates based on survey estimates rather than complete vital statistics, which introduces uncertainty at the country level. The dataset notes 19 extreme statistical outliers, primarily concentrated at the high end of the range, which may partly reflect genuine demographic conditions rather than data error. Comparisons between countries at very different stages of demographic transition should account for these measurement differences.
Methodology
This ranking uses the World Bank World Development Indicators, indicator code SP.DYN.TFRT.IN, for the reference year 2023. The metric is defined as follows: 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. The unit is an absolute value (births per woman), and higher values are ranked higher. The dataset covers 216 countries, all with data from within the last seven years (100% recency). All 216 datapoints are classified as official quality, meeting the 70% threshold. The viability checks identified 19 extreme outliers at the 3-sigma threshold. The full range of values runs from 0.586 (Macao SAR, China, rank 216) to 6.132 (Somalia, Fed. Rep., rank 1), a spread of 946.4%. Average year-over-year change is 2.5%, indicating high stability. As a period fertility measure, the rate reflects conditions in the reference year only and does not represent completed fertility for any actual cohort of women.