Higher income women have a greater likelihood of first birth
Sept 18, 2026
Global Korean Post
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Canada’s total fertility rate (TFR) was 1.25 children per woman in 2024, a record low.
The record low in 2024 marks the continuation of a general decrease in the fertility rate since 2009, though at a slower pace of annual decline (-1.6%) than what occurred in 2022 (-6.9%) and 2023 (-5.2%).
Canada’s declining fertility has led to increased interest in the factors that influence the decision to have children, particularly the role of financial considerations amid economic uncertainty and the rising cost of living.
The Statistic Canada recently released a new study titled “Income and employment characteristics associated with women’s first birth, 2017 to 2023,” examines how income and employment characteristics relate to the likelihood of having a first child among women aged 22 to 39 who were employed and living with a married or common-law partner.
From 2017 to 2023, employed and coupled women in higher-income families were consistently more likely to have a first birth than those in lower-income families.
In 2023, women in the top family income quintile had a 14.1% likelihood of having a first child—more than double the 5.6% among women in the bottom quintile.
Women with higher individual earnings were also more likely to enter parenthood than lower-earning women, but differences by family income were larger and widened more over time. Additionally, women’s contribution to the family’s total income was not strongly or consistently related to the likelihood of having a first child.
These findings suggest that in the contemporary Canadian context—where most couples are dual-earner and most employed women work full-time—access to sufficient and stable economic resources may play a larger role in whether coupled and employed women have a first child than the division of those earnings within the couple.
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Edited by Global Korean Post
