Poland is witnessing a dramatic demographic collapse as its fertility rate plunges to unprecedented lows, exposing the limitations of state welfare in addressing what experts increasingly describe as a loneliness epidemic rather than merely an economic one. The warning bells have been sounded by researchers such as Anna Gromada, assistant professor at the Polish Academy of Sciences, who argues that the heart of the problem lies in a societal inability to forge and sustain relationships — the foundation of family formation.
Recent figures paint a worrying picture. In 2024, Poland’s fertility rate fell to around 1.1 children per woman, with projections for 2025 suggesting a further decline to 1.05. Over the same period, the population has shrunk by roughly 1.5 million people, despite years of economic growth and aggressive family-support policies. This decline comes even though unemployment is among the lowest in the EU and incomes have more than doubled over past decades—conditions that should, in principle, support higher birth rates.
The Polish government has mounted a strong pro-family effort: for example, the “800 Plus” monthly child allowance and expanding nursery and childcare places. And yet the demographic drift continues. Gromada argues that the missing link is not financial support but the dwindling number of stable couple relationships in which children are commonly born. Nearly half of Poles under the age of 30 currently report being single, while another 20 per cent say they are in a relationship but live apart. In 2024, almost two in five young men said they had not had sex in the past year.
Underlying this trend are deeper structural and cultural forces. In Poland’s case, three specific factors combine to create a particularly acute situation: the rapid socio-economic transformations since the fall of communism, the rise of psychological self-care culture, and a mismatch in the “partner market.” Gromada points out that while women in Poland out-pace men in higher education and employment—a legacy of communist-era policies—traditional expectations around family life in the private sphere persist. This means many women struggle to find partners of “equal or higher status”. At the same time, internal migration has produced gender imbalances in major cities like Warsaw, Kraków and Łódź, where women outnumber men by at least 110 : 100.
It is this combination of autonomy in the public sphere and constraint in the private sphere that has begun to unravel the traditional family formation model. As Gromada writes: “What the family and the church once provided, the therapist’s couch now supplies.” This cultural shift has made the simple act of entering a committed, intimate relationship more fraught—and without such relationships, child-bearing becomes much less likely.
Analysts say that the problem cannot be resolved simply by pumping more money into families or cutting tax incentives. The crux lies in enabling meaningful relationship formation, reversing trends of isolation and disconnection, and re-imagining social structures around coupledom and parenting. Gromada argues that the birth-rate collapse is “less about financial incentives and more about a societal struggle to build meaningful, lasting relationships.”
For journalists, policymakers and civic watchers like those in Chandigarh, the Polish case offers a cautionary tale: demographic issues of birth-rates intersect deeply with culture, gender norms, relational networks and the very practice of connection in modern life. As Poland slides toward a deeply unsustainable demographic path, the question is no longer simply how many children will be born—but whether a society can re-learn how to form the relationships that give rise to those children.
