We are often led to believe that women can have babies or careers – but not both. Every fresh dip in birth rates revives that refrain, and an emerging social media industry of “back to tradition” influencers holds it up as proof that women’s work is inherently at odds with family life. Policymakers – inside and outside the Muslim world – often buy the story and respond with cash or tax reductions for childbirth to incentivise fertility upwards.
I start from a different place: the trade-off is mismeasured. This is important to understand because fertility and female labour participation are both critical to our economies. Each drives growth, stability and intergenerational prosperity, and neither can be sacrificed without long-term economic costs. The assumption that societies must choose between them is a false dichotomy, and that mistake is proving very costly.
Crucially, international evidence shows that more jobs for women does not automatically mean a lower birth rate. In France and Sweden, well over half of adult women work – 52 per cent and 60 per cent, respectively – and fertility rates remain higher than in most Muslim-majority countries with far lower female labour force participation.
Some may point out that in addition to both of these countries having strong maternity leave and childcare support policies, a majority of births now occur outside of marriage (62 per cent in France, and 55 per cent in Sweden). This credits a flexible, non-traditional view of family structures with promoting fertility, and that is indeed true.
Does that mean the Muslim world, where most – if not all – societies heavily favour traditional family structures centred on marriage, is doomed to choose between female employment or higher birth rates?
The answer is no, and the key examples here are Bangladesh and Indonesia. Both countries preserve traditional norms, with marriage remaining the primary route to childbearing, evidenced by the fact that only 3 per cent of births occurring out of wedlock. But they also sustain both high female employment and fertility rates near (in the case of Bangladesh) or above (in Indonesia) the replacement rate of 2.1.
Equally interesting, however, is Turkey, which also demonstrates that there can be a positive – not inverse – relationship between female employment and birth rates. But the difference is that in Turkey, both are low. Like Bangladesh and Indonesia, only 3 per cent of children are born out of wedlock but female labour force participation lags at 36 per cent and the fertility has dropped to 1.48.
So, it’s clear in these cases that there need not be a trade-off. But it’s also clear that something is going right in Bangladesh and Indonesia, and wrong in Turkey. What explains the divergence? This is an important question to answer for the Islamic world, where, unlike France and Sweden, marriage is likely to remain the dominant path to having children. And marriage is a very relevant part of the answer, because the difference in the cost of entry to married life is, in fact, a major determinant of fertility.
When marriage is high-cost and there is no alternative, childbearing becomes locked behind a prohibitively expensive institution. In Turkey, which has branded 2025 the “Year of the Family” clearly out of concern for the declining birth rate, the first step into partnered adulthood has drifted out of reach. Youth unemployment stands at 18 per cent, and even those with jobs often rely on near-minimum wages. More than half of all employees earn at or near the minimum wage – a figure higher among young workers, who are the main pool of prospective couples.
Given these numbers, for couples planning to marry simply securing a modest apartment consumes nearly an entire full-time income – before accounting for deposits, furnishings or wedding expenses. In 31 of the country’s 81 provinces, the average rent consumes three quarters of the net minimum wage. In Istanbul, the largest city, the average rent far surpasses it.
Ankara’s new Family and Youth Fund, established to promote stable families, offers an interest-free, four-year loan of 150,000 liras ($3,683) to couples starting a family. But in big cities, that amount barely covers three months of rent, household appliances and basic furnishings. And because youth unemployment remains high and this is, after all, just a loan, the programme merely postpones financial pressure rather than removing it.
The contrasting success in Bangladesh and Indonesia is thanks to the fact that both countries, through policy and social practice, have tightly regulated the cost of marriage. Bangladesh’s Dowry Prohibition Act of 1980 formally limits dowry demands, and widespread campaigns promote low-cost marriage ceremonies.
In Indonesia, modest dowry practices and targeted, subsidised mortgage programmes help support more affordable pathways into household formation. The result is a low-cost, culturally sanctioned pathway into family-building allows both female employment and replacement-level fertility to co-exist.
The math is simple: one rising line – the cost of setting up a household – pushes two curves – marriage and fertility – down. That’s the real trade-off.
To be clear, household inflation is not the only brake. Stagnant wages, crowded cities, extended schooling and evolving ideals all weigh on fertility decisions. Yet, the upfront cost of forming a family is the one variable governments can re-price fastest.
It is also the one too many of them have largely ignored, focusing instead on paying couples who are already married for having children. It is simply unsustainable to invest heavily in post-birth incentives while ignoring the rising cost of forming a household in the first place, because the longer that process is delayed, the less likely births are to happen.
Governments in the Gulf, where family start-up costs are a known factor in a multi-year decline in birth rates, are taking notice of this.
In Qatar, the steep costs associated with weddings—and difficulties obtaining housing—are making marriage increasingly out of reach for many young couples.
In the UAE, fertility has slipped to roughly 1.2 children per woman for Emirati citizens. A 2017 study by Zayed University put the average combined wedding and dowry cost at over $180,000 – a factor that for years pushed many marriages into the couple’s early 30s.
The UAE government has discouraged lavish weddings in recent years, explicitly linking the policy to efforts to promote family-building after studies showed that prohibitive cost is one of the main reasons Emiratis either choose not to marry or do so later in life.
Last month, the UAE’s Minister of Family, Sana bint Mohammed Suhail, announced plans for a national fertility strategy, saying the intention is to take a “multidimensional approach” of “not just revisiting child allowances or housing policies – although these matter – but rethinking how we empower young Emiratis to build families with confidence”.
A similar mindset shift is required elsewhere in the region to introduce more policies that have an impact well before a married couple start considering having a child. In the Islamic world, many governments claim to champion family values and yet often treat single adults as afterthoughts – or worse, liabilities. But singles are not outsiders to family policy; they are its foundation.
Once that shift is made, a more effective strategy becomes possible – one that recognises that fertility depends on two stages: singles’ entry into family life by forming a stable union, and sustaining that union post-entry. If the entry point is blocked, no amount of post-entry incentives like baby bonuses will move the needle.
What does this mean for policymakers? Multilateral lenders and intergovernmental organisations – such as the Islamic Development Bank, OIC agencies, UN Population Fund and the World Bank – already finance maternal health and early-childhood programmes across the Islamic world. With the right adjustments, they and individual governments could make these portfolios marriage-smart.
One way to do that is to create clear metrics to track marriage affordability. International organisations, in particular, could develop a standardised marriage-affordability index and incorporate it into their country reports. While certain indicators – like wedding costs, starter-home affordability and age at first marriage – are routinely collected in some contexts, there remains no consolidated index that offers a clear picture of entry barriers to family formation.
A useful parallel is the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business index, which transformed policy by systematically measuring the time, procedural steps and costs required to start a business. A comparable approach for marriage and household formation could similarly drive reforms. Without this visibility, governments and lenders risk designing policies that address symptoms rather than causes. Moreover, what gets measured gets budget lines.
Second, more lenders and ministries should expand funding for scalable, marriage-enabling programmes that lower the cost of forming a household. This means bankrolling gate-openers – both new initiatives and existing best practices, like wedding loans, rent-to-own housing schemes and dowry insurance pools.
Finally, economic policy should channel industrial loans toward sectors that create stable, formal employment opportunities for women. Ensuring that two paycheques can sustain a household helps keep the gate to marriage open. In Bangladesh, for example, targeted support for the garment sector created a culturally accepted form of work for women, enabling millions to contribute to household income.
The cost of inaction is clear: shrinking workforces, a resurgent but mistaken narrative blaming women’s economic participation, chronically underperforming economies and a generation unable to afford family formation.
In the end, labour and love are not opposing forces. But when marriage becomes a luxury good, both the economy and family life falter.
