Children of divorcees are less likely to have children and have fewer children overall than their peers from stable marriages. Researchers see this as a factor for falling birth rates that has so far received little attention.
03/04/2026, 04:5203/04/2026, 04:52
In Europe and North America, divorce is no longer an exceptional case. In Switzerland it has also increased significantly since the end of the 1960s: around forty percent of marriages now end in divorce.
A picture that is becoming increasingly rare: 17 percent of Swiss people are childless – and would like to stay that way.Image: Shutterstock
At the same time, birth rates are falling. Almost everywhere in the West they are well below what would be necessary to replace the parents’ generations (2.1 children per woman). In Switzerland it recently fell to 1.29 children per woman, a historic low. More and more people are also saying that they can imagine life without children. A research team from the Netherlands has now examined whether the two factors – divorce and birth rates – are related.
The scientists analyzed administrative data from almost all people in the Netherlands born between 1970 and 1980 – a total of around two million people. These included around 200,000 whose parents divorced during their childhood. The researchers followed their lives up to 2023 and compared them with those from continuously married families.
In the specialist journal “Demography” Silvia Palmaccio from Bocconi University and her team now report: Adults from divorced families are more likely to remain childless and have fewer children overall. The difference is statistically clear – although not dramatic at first glance. Men whose parents separated have on average 0.187 fewer children, which corresponds to a decrease of around 13 percent. For women, the decrease is 0.093 children or around five percent. The effects on men are therefore twice as large.
Shorter partnerships
According to the researchers, the crucial mechanism is that children of divorced parents are more likely to have shorter relationships as adults. And those who separate earlier or change partners more often have less time to have a first or further child.
This finding is important for family policy and can at least partially explain why common incentives for more children – child benefit, financed external care, better work-life balance – are less effective than politicians hope.
At the same time, the authors warn against hasty conclusions because the analysis refers exclusively to the Netherlands, a country with a comparatively well-developed welfare state. Therefore, the results cannot automatically be transferred to other countries. Although Switzerland shares certain structural characteristics such as its size and economic stability with the Netherlands, it differs significantly in the design of family policy.
When asked, Silvia Palmaccio writes that she expects that the basic connection – lower numbers of children in connection with parental divorce – could also be relevant in Switzerland. How strong the effect is, however, depends on the respective country-specific context. The direction is probably similar, but the size of the effect cannot be predicted without specific data. (aargauerzeitung.ch)