TOP 10 Countries with Highest Birth Rate (Crude Birth Rate, 2025)
Public debates about population usually focus on countries where birth rates are falling: ageing Europe, shrinking East Asia, or global cities where young adults postpone parenthood. Yet at the same time there is a compact cluster of countries where birth rates remain extraordinarily high by international standards. In these societies, each year sees far more babies born per 1,000 people than in most of the rest of the world. Their demographic choices in the 2020s and 2030s will have long-lasting global consequences.
The key indicator used to compare these countries is the crude birth rate (CBR) — the number of live births per 1,000 people in a year. Because CBR uses the whole population in the denominator, it captures the immediate pressure that new births place on schools, health systems and labour markets, even if families are slowly moving towards smaller family sizes.
To understand family behaviour, demographers therefore combine CBR with the total fertility rate (TFR). TFR answers a different question: how many children would a woman have over her lifetime if she experienced current age-specific birth rates at each age? In other words, it is a synthetic measure of family size, focused only on women of child-bearing age. While CBR captures the flow of births into the population this year, TFR tells us whether norms are closer to six or seven children, or to two or three.
Globally, the UN estimates that the average woman now has just above two children — roughly half the level seen in the 1950s. But behind this average lies a sharp contrast. In much of Europe and East Asia, fertility is well below the replacement level of about 2.1 children per woman. Without migration, those societies would gradually shrink and age. In contrast, in parts of sub-Saharan Africa fertility still hovers around four children per woman, and in a handful of countries it is significantly higher.
The ten countries with the highest crude birth rates today sit almost entirely in sub-Saharan Africa. In these states, CBR typically ranges from about 38 to the mid-40s births per 1,000 people. Populations are extremely young: often more than 40 percent of residents are under 15. Girls frequently marry in their teens, access to modern contraception is limited, and many families still view a large number of children as insurance against economic hardship and old age. High birth rates are therefore not simply a matter of individual preference, but the outcome of deep social and economic structures.
For governments, this brings both opportunities and risks. A large cohort of young people can become a demographic dividend: if they receive education and find productive jobs, their work can accelerate growth and help reduce poverty. But if education systems, housing, infrastructure and labour markets cannot keep pace with the rising number of children and teenagers, the same youth bulge can turn into a “demographic trap” marked by unemployment, social tension and pressure to migrate. Understanding the countries where birth rates remain highest is thus essential for planning investments in schools, health systems and jobs.
Where birth rates are highest today
Using UN World Population Prospects and World Bank data, the current high-birth-rate “core” is almost entirely concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa, where crude birth rates in the top ten countries cluster between about 38 and 46 births per 1,000 people.
Typical estimates for 2023–2024 show very high crude birth rates in the following states: the Central African Republic, Niger, Chad, Somalia, Angola, Benin, Mali, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique. Exact rankings can differ slightly by year and data source, but these ten countries consistently occupy the top positions in global tables of birth rates.
| Country | Crude birth rate (births per 1,000 people, ≈2024) |
UN region |
|---|---|---|
| Central African Republic | ≈ 46 | Middle Africa (Sub-Saharan Africa) |
| Niger | ≈ 42 | Western Africa (Sub-Saharan Africa) |
| Chad | ≈ 41 | Middle Africa (Sub-Saharan Africa) |
| Somalia | ≈ 40 | Eastern Africa (Sub-Saharan Africa) |
| Angola | ≈ 40 | Middle Africa (Sub-Saharan Africa) |
| Benin | ≈ 39 | Western Africa (Sub-Saharan Africa) |
| Mali | ≈ 39 | Western Africa (Sub-Saharan Africa) |
| Uganda | ≈ 38 | Eastern Africa (Sub-Saharan Africa) |
| Democratic Republic of Congo | ≈ 38 | Middle Africa (Sub-Saharan Africa) |
| Mozambique | ≈ 38 | Eastern Africa (Sub-Saharan Africa) |
Approximate values based on UN World Population Prospects (2024 revision) and World Bank estimates for 2023–2024. The bars highlight how far these countries sit above the global average of roughly 17–18 births per 1,000 people.
Niger is often cited as the world’s highest-fertility country. Its crude birth rate is lower today than in the 1980s and 1990s, yet it still towers above the global average. Most people live in rural areas, many girls marry in their teens, and agriculture remains the main source of income. Children are seen as both workers and a form of social security in old age. While child mortality has fallen, it remains higher than in richer regions, which reinforces norms that favour large families and slows the shift towards smaller family sizes.
The Central African Republic and Chad show how fragility and conflict can delay the demographic transition. Prolonged violence, political instability and weak institutions disrupt schooling and health services, including family planning. Clinics may be far away, understaffed, or simply distrusted. In such environments, relying on many children can still look like the safest option for households that expect little formal support from the state in old age or in times of crisis.
Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique follow a somewhat different pattern. All three have rapidly growing cities and significant natural resources. Child mortality has fallen and education has expanded, especially in urban centres. Fertility is declining among educated urban women, but large rural populations still have many children. As a result, crude birth rates decline only slowly, even as total fertility begins to move down. These countries are in an early transition stage where both growth potential and social risks are high.
In Benin, Mali and Uganda, access to schooling — particularly for girls — has expanded faster than in some neighbours, and there are active programmes promoting reproductive health and voluntary family planning. Country averages, however, still hide wide internal gaps. Urban middle-class households may already be close to two or three children on average, while poorer rural families continue to have five or more. Whether these gaps close over the next 10–20 years will determine if a very young population becomes a genuine demographic dividend for these states, or a prolonged strain on public finances and infrastructure.
Crude birth rate and fertility: reading the long-term trends
Looking only at crude birth rates can suggest that “nothing is changing” in high-birth-rate countries. In fact, fertility has fallen quite substantially in many of them since the early 1990s. What keeps CBR high is the age structure: because earlier generations had many children, today there is a large number of women in their twenties and early thirties. Even if each woman has fewer children than her mother did, the total number of births per year remains very large.
When we compare crude birth rate (CBR) with total fertility rate (TFR) for the same countries, the picture becomes clearer: fertility is declining, but in most of the top ten it still sits well above the replacement level of around 2.1 children per woman.
| Country | Total fertility rate (births per woman, ≈2024) |
Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Niger | ≈ 6.0 | Extreme youthfulness and early marriage; fertility is falling slowly but remains among the highest in the world. |
| Chad | ≈ 5.2 | High desired family size and limited access to modern contraception, especially outside major towns. |
| Somalia | ≈ 5.1 | Long-running insecurity, a large rural population and interrupted schooling keep fertility elevated. |
| Democratic Republic of Congo | ≈ 5.5 | Faster declines in big cities; rural areas still see large families as the norm and children as economic support. |
| Central African Republic | ≈ 4.0 | Conflict and weak institutions slow social change; birth rates are falling, but from very high starting points. |
| Angola | ≈ 4.7 | Post-war reconstruction and urban growth drive gradual fertility decline, especially among educated women. |
| Benin | ≈ 5.3 | Education and family-planning programmes expand, yet many rural households still prefer large families. |
| Mali | ≈ 5.3 | Security challenges and poverty slow progress; fertility remains very high in rural and conflict-affected regions. |
| Uganda | ≈ 4.7 | One of the faster decliners in the group; strong urban-rural divides in education and fertility behaviour. |
| Mozambique | ≈ 4.7 | Gradual decline as schooling expands and child mortality falls, but high teenage pregnancy persists. |
The line chart compares crude birth rate trends in Niger, Chad, Uganda and Mozambique from 1990 to 2025. Values are illustrative but follow the direction of UN World Population Prospects estimates at five-year intervals: a clear decline from very high levels, yet still well above the global average.
Over the long run, almost all countries follow a similar demographic path. As child survival improves and families gain access to education, urban jobs and social protection, they tend to move from large to smaller families. In the early stages, however, birth rates remain high because the population is very young and there are many women of child-bearing age. This is where most of today’s top-ten high-birth-rate countries are: they have started the demographic transition, but they are still far from the low-fertility plateau reached in Europe, North America or East Asia.
Whether high birth rates become a demographic dividend or a demographic trap depends on policy choices: sustained investment in girls’ education, voluntary family planning, and job creation for young people can turn today’s youth boom into tomorrow’s growth engine.
For the rest of the world, the experience of these high-birth-rate countries is a reminder that global population trends are not uniform. While some societies worry about too few babies, others still struggle with the pressures of very high fertility in contexts of climate vulnerability, conflict and limited fiscal space. The same UN projections that show world population stabilising later this century also indicate that a large share of future population growth will be concentrated in a relatively small number of African countries — many of them the same states that dominate today’s crude birth-rate rankings. How they manage the next 20–30 years will shape the global demographic landscape for generations.
Data and methodology sources
- The main population estimates and projections in this article are taken from the United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division – World Population Prospects 2024 revision .
- Country-level indicators for crude birth rate and total fertility rate are derived from World Bank Open Data (World Development Indicators), in particular “Birth rate, crude (per 1,000 people)” (SP.DYN.CBRT.IN) and “Fertility rate, total (births per woman)” (SP.DYN.TFRT.IN) .
- Long-term visualisations and cross-country comparisons of birth and fertility rates are cross-checked against the datasets compiled by Our World in Data, including “Birth rate: births per 1,000 people” and “Total fertility rate: births per woman” .
