Denmark’s birth rate is rising again after three consecutive years of decline, with official figures showing almost 59,500 live births in 2025 and preliminary data suggesting that the recovery continued at the beginning of 2026.
Statistics Denmark recorded 59,443 live births in 2025, around 2,400 more than in 2024, when the number had fallen to approximately 57,000. During the first three months of 2026, births were on average slightly more than 1% higher than in the same period of the previous year.
The increase marks a change from the trend recorded after 2021. Denmark registered 63,473 births that year, before the total declined annually between 2022 and 2024.
Denmark’s birth rate remains below replacement level
The latest figures indicate a recovery, but they do not amount to a reversal of Denmark’s longer-term demographic decline.
The country’s total fertility rate reached 1.506 children per woman in 2025, up from 1.47 in 2024. This remains far below the replacement level of approximately 2.1 children per woman, which is generally required to maintain a population without net migration.
“We have seen an increase of 2,400 children from 2024 to 2025. So that is positive,” Rune Lindahl-Jacobsen, professor of demography and epidemiology at the University of Southern Denmark (Syddansk Universitet), told DR.
Lindahl-Jacobsen stressed that Denmark is still not producing enough births to replace its population naturally. Immigration therefore remains an important factor in sustaining population growth and the size of the future workforce.
Denmark nevertheless had a higher fertility rate in 2024 than Sweden, Norway and Finland. Fertility has fallen throughout the Nordic region since 2010, despite extensive parental leave systems, subsidised childcare and comparatively strong welfare provision.
Fertility treatment contributed to the increase
Lindahl-Jacobsen estimates that expanded access to fertility treatment accounted for around 18% of the increase in births between 2024 and 2025.
Since December 2024, Denmark’s publicly funded healthcare system has offered fertility treatment not only for a first child but also for people seeking a second child. The scheme is available to couples and single people who meet the treatment criteria.
The Danish government is considering a further expansion. Its programme includes removing the limit on the number of children for which people can receive publicly funded fertility treatment and raising the age limit applied by public clinics.
Assisted reproduction already plays a particularly important role in Denmark. According to the OECD, 9.2% of Danish live births involved some form of assisted reproductive technology in 2019, the highest recorded share among OECD countries.
Lindahl-Jacobsen said the expanded treatment had produced a measurable effect and argued that additional changes should be implemented quickly. However, he also warned that fertility treatment alone cannot restore the birth rate to replacement level.
Even if every person currently receiving fertility treatment had a child, he estimated that Denmark’s fertility rate would rise only to approximately 1.7.
More Danes are postponing parenthood
The demographic recovery is also constrained by changes in when and whether people decide to have children.
The average age of first-time mothers in Denmark reached 30.4 years in 2025. Lindahl-Jacobsen said pressure to complete education and establish a career means that many women postpone pregnancy until around the age of 30, when the probability of experiencing fertility difficulties begins to increase.
The OECD has also identified housing costs, financial insecurity and the perceived cost of raising children as barriers to family formation in Denmark. While the country has accessible childcare and extensive family benefits, these policies primarily help people who have already become parents and may have less influence on the decision to have a first child.
Another important change is the sharp decline in births among younger women. According to Lindahl-Jacobsen, fewer women having children at a young age is the largest single factor reducing Denmark’s overall fertility rate.
Environmental chemicals, declining sperm quality and lifestyle-related health problems may also contribute to involuntary childlessness, although their precise demographic effects remain uncertain.
The increase recorded in 2025 and early 2026 is therefore a significant change after several years of decline, but it is too early to establish whether it represents a lasting recovery. Denmark’s demographic outlook will continue to depend on fertility policies, the conditions facing younger adults and continued immigration, as the country confronts the same ageing pressures affecting the rest of the Nordic region and the European Union.
