First child
The effect is strong and clear. Among childless women, the lower likelihood of being an owner fully explains the negative effect of rising prices.
strong effectBlog · Research · Housing and fertility
Owning a home and the decision to have a child.
The most comprehensive study on the subject follows the entire population of the Netherlands for twelve consecutive years. Homeowners conceive children more often than renters, and when prices rise, it also matters how long you have been an owner. And all of this applies above all to the first child.
Published: 27 August 2026 · 4.4 million women · 2012–2023 · register data, not a survey · European Journal of Population, 2025+80%
Owners compared with renters
0.0699 against 0.0390 — after accounting for income, education and age
−4.8%
Among renters
When local prices rise by €100,000
+2.1%
Among owners
With the same price rise, in the same area
+5.3%
Owners for more than 3 years
Against −3.8% for those who bought within the last year
The figures are from the Dutch study and refer to the probability that a woman conceives a child in a given year.
The basis
What exactly was measured, and how.
The study was published in November 2025 in the European Journal of Population by Daniël van Wijk and Peteke Feijten. Two things set it apart from almost everything written on the subject before.
First — this is not a survey. It works with the registers of Statistics Netherlands, meaning the whole population rather than a sample of people who agreed to answer. The analysis includes every woman aged 16 to 45 in the country between 2012 and 2023: 4.4 million people and 32.7 million person-year observations. There are no drop-outs and no bias from who chose to respond.
Second — the comparison is within each area, not between areas. Prices are linked to 40 regional units, and the model looks at how fertility changes in the same area when prices there change. This removes the permanent differences between areas — attitudes, traditions, population mix. It is precisely those differences that weaken the conclusions of most regional studies, including the Bulgarian ones.
The model accounts for age, income, education, employment, the number of children already born, migration background and local unemployment.
The background — and what exactly rose
The variable the model tracks is the average sale price of an existing home in the area, measured in the first quarter and converted to 2022 prices. All the effects below are expressed in the same terms — hence the €100,000 step.
Two areas show the order of magnitude. In Greater Amsterdam the average price rose from €333,000 in 2012 to €605,000 in 2022 — an increase of €272,000, or about 82%. In South Limburg it rose from €211,000 to €299,000 — an increase of €88,000, or about 42%. For the country as a whole the authors calculate a rise of more than €130,000 between 2010 and 2022, again after removing inflation.
Over the same period the total fertility rate fell from 1.80 to 1.43 children per woman, and the mother’s average age at first birth rose from 29.4 to 30.3. The question the study asks is whether the two are connected.
Why the effects are given “per €100,000” rather than in percentages. Price in the model is measured in steps of €100,000 at constant prices. What share of a home that step represents depends on the area: in South Limburg it is about half the average price, in Greater Amsterdam about a sixth. Comparing percentage with percentage would mislead here: the decision to have a child is made against a sum of money, not a percentage.
Finding 1
Owners have more children. The difference is not small.
The probability that a woman who owns her home conceives a child in a given year is 0.0699. For renters it is 0.0390. The difference is about 80%, and it remains intact after accounting for income, education, employment and age.
Here the authors are explicitly cautious, and it is worth following their lead. The figure shows that the two go together, but not which one drives the other. Buying a home may open the door to a child; but the decision to have a child may also speed up the purchase. This kind of data cannot separate the two directions.
Three explanations the study tests
- Access to suitable housing. A room for each child, a garden, a quiet neighbourhood — things that in most countries are found more often in an owned home than in a rented one.
- Cost. Housing is a large part of what it costs to raise a child. The more expensive the market, the more of the family budget goes on a roof, and the less is left for everything else.
- A threshold of maturity. For some people, owning a home is a precondition for parenthood in its own right, regardless of floor area.
Finding 2
The same price rise pushes in two opposite directions.
For the population as a whole, a €100,000 rise in local prices is associated with a 3.1% fall in the probability of conception. That is the average — and, as averages do, it hides movement in two directions.
−4.8%
Renters
The price rise is a wall
+2.1%
Owners
The price rise is accumulated wealth
−3.1%
Everyone, on average
The average hides both directions
For someone outside the market, rising prices are a wall: rent goes up, ownership moves further away, and the home they can afford becomes less suitable for a child. For someone already inside, the same rise is accumulated wealth — their home is worth more, while their repayment was calculated on the old price.
The study also measures how much of the overall negative effect runs specifically through the fact that, in a more expensive market, fewer young people reach ownership at all. The answer is 11%. The remaining 89% runs through other channels — probably the costs themselves, and delays in the steps that come before a child, such as leaving the parental home and forming a joint household. The study, however, does not separate them.
Finding 3
When prices rise, it matters not only whether you bought, but when.
This part is almost absent from the rest of the literature — and it is the most uncomfortable.
−3.8%
Bought within the last year
They behave like renters
−2.0%
Bought 1 to 3 years ago
The effect weakens
+5.3%
Owners for more than 3 years
The price rise is now capital
The recent buyer behaves like a renter. The effect for them (−3.8%) is close to that for people who never reached ownership at all.
The authors explain it this way: they did not gain from the price rise — they paid for it. They bought at the top, their repayment was calculated on the high price, and they most likely compromised on size or location to get a deal done. Wealth on paper, yes; spare money, no.
When prices rise, being an owner is not enough — it matters when you became one. That is the difference between someone whose home has already turned into capital and someone whose home is still mainly a liability.
Finding 4
All of this applies above all to the first child.
Second child
Prices barely register. The gap between owners and renters narrows sharply.
weak effectThird and later
The direction reverses: renters are more likely than owners. Other things decide here, not the housing market.
reversedThe explanation the authors offer: a first child is the easiest to postpone, because the biological and social constraints are weakest. And people who have already had a first child in less than ideal housing are a particular group — for them housing weighs less in the next decision anyway.
The practical reading: for a first child, housing is not one factor among many. It is the mechanism itself. For the second and third, other things matter, which this study does not measure.
Corroboration
Other studies point the same way.
One study, however large, is still one study. Here is what the others show — including where they diverge.
Sweden: three separate studies, one conclusion
Ström 2010 · Öst 2012 · Chudnovskaya 2019
Swedish registers have been studied three times with different questions: first births between 1972 and 2005; whether young people make the housing decision and the family decision together; and the housing environment as a condition for having a child. All three find higher fertility among owners.
Öst, however, finds a negative link between municipal housing costs and fertility only for those born in 1974, not for those born in 1956 and 1964. At least in the Swedish case, housing weighs more heavily on younger generations.
Italy: the same cost means different things
Gallo et al. 2025
Using the Bank of Italy’s survey of household income and wealth (1998–2016): higher housing expenditure is positively associated with having a child — but only for owners, not for renters. The explanation mirrors the Dutch data seen from another side: for an owner, a large housing outlay usually means a purchase or a renovation — preparing the home. For a renter, it simply means a burden.
Italy: what matters is a sense of security
Vignoli et al. 2013
Couples who feel more secure in their housing situation more often plan a first child in the near future. What is measured here is not ownership as such, but the confidence that you will not have to move. This is an important detail for Bulgaria: ownership is one way to reach that sense of security, but not the only one.
Finland: the type of home matters too
Kulu & Vikat 2007
Fertility is highest among couples in single-family houses and lowest among those living in flats, and the difference persists after accounting for the woman’s characteristics. But after a move, fertility rises — a sign that much of the difference comes from who moves, not from the walls themselves.
Many countries: the view from above, 1993–2017
Brauner-Otto 2023
An analysis of the link between the housing sector and fertility at country level over almost a quarter of a century — the broadest view of the subject available.
The caveat: the two decisions are made together
Kulu & Steele 2013
The work that sets the limits of this whole literature. Having a child and changing home are intertwined steps in the same life course: the intention to have a child speeds up a purchase at least as much as the purchase makes a child possible. That is why none of the studies listed — including the Dutch one — claims that housing causes births.
The common thread. The link between owning a home and having a child is confirmed in the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy and Finland, using register, panel and survey data. It is robust. But it is clear mainly for the first child: for the second it weakens, and for the third and later it reverses. That is also the limit up to which the finding can honestly be used.
The limits
What the study does not prove.
These are not our caveats — the authors set them out themselves in their discussion of limitations.
It does not prove causation. It cannot rule out unobserved factors — such as how “family-minded” attitudes are in a given area — or selective migration: if people planning a child move to cheaper areas, they themselves create part of the result.
It cannot tell postponement from forgoing. Twelve years are not enough to see whether missed births are made up later, once the housing question is settled, or disappear for good.
The Netherlands is not Bulgaria. There, owner-occupied housing makes up 57% of the stock, social rent 29% and private rent 14%. Borrowing against a home that has risen in value is rare. Each of these changes the strength of the mechanisms measured.
Transfer
What applies to Bulgaria.
From here on we move from measured fact to interpretation. We say so explicitly, because the difference matters.
The Dutch model is “career” ownership: a young person starts out renting, lives there for years and buys later, once their income is high and stable enough. The rental market is large, regulated and socially protected.
Bulgaria works differently. Its home-ownership rate is among the highest in the European Union, the rental market is small and offers tenants little real protection, and mortgage lending is a much smaller share of the economy than in Western Europe.
It is precisely this combination — high ownership and weak access to mortgages — that Mulder and Billari, in Housing Studies (2010), describe as a “difficult” housing regime and associate with the lowest fertility levels among the countries they examined. Their sample, however, is of Western countries. Placing Bulgaria in that regime is an extension of their model, not a published result of theirs, and should be read as such.
Three Bulgarian features the research does not cover
- Inheritance. A large share of Bulgarian households enter home ownership not through the market but through inheritance or direct help from parents. This path is almost absent from the Dutch data, and it may break the link between prices and access to ownership.
- The multigenerational household. A study of a Sofia sub-sample of the Generations and Gender Survey describes exactly this pattern: the first child comes early and is born in the parents’ home, and the second does not come at all. If this is the main Bulgarian pattern, the “owning versus renting” divide may be the wrong one. The right one is “a home of your own versus someone else’s, even if it is family” — which ties in with the Italian finding on a sense of security.
- The lack of measurement. The only Bulgarian quantitative study on the subject (Stoenchev and Hrishteva, 2023) works with regional averages and a correlation coefficient, without control variables. That approach does not allow a causal conclusion in either direction — it mainly captures differences in social composition between regions.
The conclusion that can be defended. In Bulgaria, this link has not been measured at the level of the individual. The data exist — population registers, the National Statistical Institute, mortgage lending data. A study linking a specific person’s housing situation to the birth of a specific child does not. Everything claimed in Bulgaria on the subject is either transferred from foreign research or a correlation between regional averages.
Why we publish this
The strongest measured effect comes before the deal, not in it.
If anything in these figures is robust, it is this: the decisive threshold is not the choice of a particular property, but the earlier question — whether a person has any path to a home of their own at all, and how early they will travel it. For first births, it is precisely access to ownership that fully explains the negative effect of rising prices.
That is also the question FinHome starts from: budget first, then the right property. Not because it will change the birth rate, but because the order of the questions matters.
Budget first. Then the right property.
A free preliminary assessment and a conversation with a FinCity credit consultant — no documents and no commitment at this stage.
Check your budget
Sources:
All figures in the first part of the article come from source 1, unless stated otherwise.
- van Wijk, D., & Feijten, P. (2025). Rising House Prices, Falling Fertility? How Rising House Prices Widen Fertility Differences between Tenure Groups. European Journal of Population, 41, article 33. Open access. doi.org/10.1007/s10680-025-09754-6
- Kulu, H., & Steele, F. (2013). Interrelationships Between Childbearing and Housing Transitions in the Family Life Course. Demography, 50(5), 1687–1714.
- Gallo, G. et al. (2025). Housing Expenditure and Births in Italy. Population, Space and Place. doi.org/10.1002/psp.70131
- Brauner-Otto, S. R. (2023). Housing and fertility: A macro-level, multi-country investigation, 1993–2017. Housing Studies, 38(4), 569–596. doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2021.1893279
- Mulder, C. H., & Billari, F. C. (2010). Homeownership Regimes and Low Fertility. Housing Studies, 25(4), 527–541. doi.org/10.1080/02673031003711469
- Chudnovskaya, M. (2019). Housing context and childbearing in Sweden: A cohort study. Housing Studies, 34(3), 469–488.
- Ström, S. (2010). Housing and first births in Sweden, 1972–2005. Housing Studies, 25(4), 509–526.
- Öst, C. E. (2012). Housing and children: Simultaneous decisions? — A cohort study of young adults' housing and family formation decision. Journal of Population Economics, 25, 349–366.
- Vignoli, D. et al. (2013) — on housing security and short-term intentions to have a first child among Italian couples.
- Kulu, H., & Vikat, A. (2007). Fertility differences by housing type: The effect of housing conditions or of selective moves? Demographic Research, 17(26), 775–802.
- Tocchioni, V., Berrington, A., Vignoli, D., & Vitali, A. (2021). The Changing Association Between Homeownership and the Transition to Parenthood. Demography, 58(5), 1843–1865.
- Dettling, L. J., & Kearney, M. S. (2014). House prices and birth rates: The impact of the real estate market on the decision to have a baby. Journal of Public Economics, 110, 82–100.
- Stoenchev, N., & Hrishteva, Y. (2023). Study of the Impact of Housing Affordability on the Fertility Rate in Bulgaria (2014–2021): A Regional Aspect. Baltic Journal of Real Estate Economics and Construction Management, 11(1), 101–119. doi.org/10.2478/bjreecm-2023-0007
- Starting a Family at Your Parents' House: Multigenerational Households and Below Replacement Fertility in Urban Bulgaria. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 43(3), 439 ff. (based on a sub-sample of the Generations and Gender Survey — Bulgaria).