Is a family-friendly home still a prerequisite for childbearing?

Over the past decade a housing crisis manifested itself in many affluent societies, inhibiting young adults’ access to family-friendly housing. The lack of affordable family-friendly housing could influence fertility, but this depends on how young adults adapt their fertility decisions to the housing crisis, a question that is not sufficiently understood. We outline two contrasting hypotheses on how the housing crisis changed the types of housing in which people have children. On the one hand, rising housing prerequisites may have strengthened the association between family-friendly housing and fertility. On the other hand, young adults may adapt to the housing crisis by having children outside of family-friendly housing. We examine these possibilities using register data on the full population of the Netherlands between 2012 and 2023, a period when family-friendly housing became increasingly unaffordable. Results show that fertility is higher in terraced and (semi-)detached housing, larger housing, and among homeowners. We find some evidence that these associations strengthened over time, consistent with rising housing prerequisites of childbearing. Overall, however, the relationship between family-friendly housing and fertility has remained remarkably stable over time. This suggests that the growing lack of affordable family-friendly housing constitutes an important driver of recent declines in fertility.