Fertility Intentions of Ukrainians in Poland – to What Extend Do They Depend on Their Perception of Global Threats?

Weronika Kloc-Nowak , University of Warsaw
Jeremy Caldeira, Centre of Migration Research, University of Warsaw

So far, the link between perceived uncertainty of the future and fertility intentions has primarily been studied among Western European societies. We explore this issue among Ukrainian pre-2022 migrants and war refugees in Poland, subjected directly to a range of threats, including war in their homeland, insecure legal status in Poland and often precarious economic situation. We have applied the survey module on global uncertainties developed for the Gender and Generations Survey by Andersson et al. (2020) and implemented it as a part of panel survey on childbearing histories and fertility norms and intentions collected in 2024 and 2025 from Ukrainians residing in Poland. Preliminary results on N=1738 reproductive age participants from wave 1 show that (controlling for gender, age, relationship status, number of children, education, temporary protection status as a war migrant) the higher the level of concern about the global uncertainties (measured as an index of 13 items) the less keen participants were to declare a positive intention to have a child in the next 3 years. The significance of global uncertainties for fertility intentions was reduced after adding indicators of life satisfaction and optimism, the latter significantly increased the chances of positive childbearing intention. With wave 2 (on-going, with over 680 answers completed by end of October 2025) we measure whether and how the Ukrainians’ perception of global sources of uncertainty and fertility intentions have changed between 2024 and 2025. Moreover, we contextualise (forced) migrants’ perception of uncertainties with survey results from selected Central-Eastern European host societies.

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 Presented in Session P34. Environment, Fertility and Mobility