Policies such as the Macao government’s new temporary childcare allowance may only serve as a band-aid for Macao’s falling birth rates, according to international fertility experts. Academics cite structural socio-economic factors and a lack of desire for children as root causes behind the phenomenon.
According to statistics from Macao’s Statistics and Census Service, only 671 live births were recorded in the second quarter of 2025, continuing a trend of declining birth rates in the city. In 2024, Macao had the lowest birth rate out of all countries and regions at 0.68 births per person, making a United Nations list of places where the population will peak before 2054.
While low birth rates aren’t necessarily a problem on their own, they can lead to economic and population problems. On the global scale, the trend has been “triggering a series of crises” according to the Social Welfare Bureau (known by the Portuguese abbreviation IAS): these include economic slowdown, ageing populations and diminished labour forces, they wrote in a statement to Macao News. These consequences have already begun to manifest in Macao: last year, the number of senior citizens exceeded the number of children, according to the Statistics and Census Service.
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The Macao government’s campaign to reverse the trend has previously involved releasing promotional videos and making larger housing more accessible. However, the downturn has persisted: the annual number of live births has dropped by almost a thousand each year since 2020, the IAS noted.
More recently, the government has been implementing financial incentives. Just last month, the IAS launched a temporary childcare allowance, providing stipends to parents with children below the age of three. It also extended an existing programme that provides subsidies for women on maternity leave.
What’s behind Macao’s low birth rate?
The causes behind low fertility rates are often multifaceted, said sociologist Emma Zang of Yale University. Within the East Asian context, socio-economic factors play a significant role. “Women’s increasing educational attainment makes them very competitive on the labour market,” Zang told Macao News. “That leads to [a] higher opportunity cost for them to raise children.” This is especially true in societies with high levels of gender inequality, she said. Indeed, a 2010 paper published in the Journal of Public Health found that higher educational levels of women were inversely correlated with lower birth rates in Macao.
Residents’ backlash against a controversial video from the government last year further reflects dissatisfaction with child-raising conditions in Macao: comments mention the city’s relatively short maternity leave and fears about the economic conditions under which children will grow up. The comments back up the results of a survey last year from the Women’s General Association of Macao, which found that 73 percent of residents considered child rearing too expensive.
The issue may also be exacerbated by Macao’s urban environment. According to Zang, it’s often harder in urban areas to find affordable housing that has enough space for a family, not to mention the high costs of financially supporting children in cities. Urbanisation is also linked to more individualism, said Zang, which means that people are less likely to be willing to make sacrifices associated with parenting.
But a simpler factor may be a broader regional trend of not wanting to have children, said Zang. “[When you ask] people, how many children do you want to have, or do you plan to be parents at all? The number is declining every year in East Asian countries, especially in mainland China,” she said.
Solutions to Macao’s low fertility level
Despite ageing populations being a common phenomenon in developed regions, academics have yet to find a reliable solution, according to Zang. Financial incentives such as childcare subsidies may yield small returns, but they are both temporary and low in magnitude, she said. “It’s definitely not enough to raise the fertility level very much,” Zang said.
However, a Population and Development Review paper from 2021 found that, in Central and Western Europe, expanding access to childcare led to a sustainable boost in birth rates, a finding in line with earlier research from Canada. The 2021 review also found that increasing the duration of paid parental leave was also effective in places such as Canada.
[See more: Macao women are under significant financial and work-related stress, survey finds]
According to Zang, lines of research into workplace policies may also hold potential. “If we make life easier for women to integrate family life with their work, maybe they will be more willing to have children,” she said. Flexible scheduling, remote work and reduced work hours are among these promising measures, she said. Such an approach has been effective in Western contexts.
But as of now, there seems to be no one-size-fits-all solution, said Zang. “There is no very fast, very effective policy that could raise the birth rate to the level that people would want to see.”
