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The number of babies being born per woman in the Western Cape and Gauteng has dropped below the number needed to keep the population stable.

This is according to latest figures from Statistics South Africa (Stats SA), which released its latest Mid-Year Population Estimates report last month.

According to Stats SA projections and estimates the average number of babies born per woman per year in the Western Cape between 2021 and 2026 was 1.77 and in Gauteng 1.74.

For a population to remain stable the average number of children a woman should have over her lifetime is 2.1.

The average fertility rate between 2021 and 2026 was highest in Limpopo, where it was 2.86. This was followed by the Eastern Cape (2.62), Northern Cape (2.61), North West (2.34), KwaZulu-Natal (2.27), Mpumalanga (2.25), and the Free State (2.21).

The chart below shows the various provinces’ historical and current fertility rates.

For South Africa as a whole, Stats SA provides data per year, rather than for five-year estimates as it does for the various provinces, and on that measure South Africa’s fertility rate has declined to 2.1 in 2026, the lowest ever recorded.

The chart below shows South Africa’s fertility rate from 2002 to 2026.

While there have been some questions raised over the accuracy of Stats SA’s data, the figures around fertility match with the broader phenomenon of declining fertility around the world. In addition, as a society becomes richer and more educated (as South Africa generally has over the past three decades) overall fertility declines. Furthermore, the fertility rates in South Africa’s two most developed provinces – Gauteng and the Western Cape – are now below what is needed to keep a population stable.

The United Nations projects that South Africa’s population will reach about 94 million by the end of the century, up from 63.5 million today. This would mean adding roughly 30 million people over the next 75 years. By comparison, South Africa added about the same number of people in only 45 years between the early 1980s and 2026. The population will therefore continue to grow, but at a much slower pace than in previous decades.

One of the major global concerns in the 20th century was that of overpopulation. However, this century has seen a major decline in the number of children being born, with estimates of the future global population having to routinely be revised down. While overpopulation has its own problems, so does underpopulation. Underpopulation leaves too few workers and taxpayers to support a growing elderly population, weakening economic growth and placing pensions, healthcare, and public services under strain.

This is increasingly a problem faced by much of the West as well as several other countries, particularly in East Asia.

South Africa’s situation is a bit different to that of other societies with slowing fertility rates because of its very high rate of unemployment. In the bulk of other societies, the problem of a slowing fertility rate becomes that there are not enough economically active people who are able to sustain the welfare systems and tax bases to support increasingly elderly populations. In South Africa’s case the welfare system is also directed at supporting the younger and what should be economically active population while even if the economy grew at the same rate as its emerging market peers, it would be 20 or 30 years before the unemployment rate approached that of the emerging market norm. South Africa is therefore unlikely to "run out" of the young people needed to sustain the status quo of its economy – which is the risk many other economies face.