Uncertainty and Fertility in Ukraine on the Eve of Russia’s Full-Scale Invasion: The Impact of Armed Conflict and Economic Crisis

While uncertainty has been a key explanation for very low fertility throughout Europe, few studies have analysed how macro-level uncertainty trickles down to shape how people think about having children. Most research focuses on economic uncertainty, not political or social uncertainty. We address these gaps with qualitative data from Ukraine, which has experienced extreme political uncertainty and, for the past decade, armed conflict. Ukraine also had exceptionally low fertility, with an estimated total fertility rate of 1.17 in 2021. In July 2021, we conducted 16 online focus groups on topics related to childbearing with informants living in urban and rural areas in Eastern Ukraine, including areas of Donetsk province that were outside Ukrainian government control. Half the groups consisted of persons displaced by the 2014 Donbas war. The discussions revealed distinct patterns whereby experiences of displacement, the simmering armed conflict, and economic problems combined to produce and intensify uncertainties that discouraged couples from having more than one child. Some blamed the government or delved into conspiracy theories. Armed conflict generates its own forms of uncertainty that interact with persistent economic challenges, dampening fertility.