Economic Boom and Baby Bust in Georgia @gurapaedu

Insights · A series in six parts

Economic Boom and
Baby Bust in Georgia

We often hear that Georgia is doing well: the economy is growing fast and wages are rising. Since 2014, real GDP has grown by more than 80%, and over the last five years by about 9% a year, partly a rebound from 2020.Growth like this is usually expected to make it easier to start a family. In Georgia, the opposite has happened. Births have fallen for eleven years in a row, weddings are down by almost a third, and two in three young adults say they would leave for a while if they had the chance.So have Georgians stopped wanting to marry and have children? Or are there reasons that make them wait: a steady job, a home they can afford and a future clear enough to plan a family around?

By Lukasi Kalandia, economist, founder of GurapaEdu

At a glance

The puzzle in numbers

The charts below set the economy beside family life. Since 2014, the year births peaked, real GDP has grown every year except 2020 and is now 84% larger. Over the same period, weddings per 1,000 people dropped by a third, women married 3.5 years older on average and became mothers almost three years later, and births fell by 38%. These are the starting facts. The analysis that follows tries to explain them through an economic lens: it asks what drives these decisions, not whether they are right or wrong.

Georgia, 2005-2025

Sources: Geostat; World Bank.

The series

A family-oriented country with fewer families

Georgia lies in the South Caucasus, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, with Russia to the north and Türkiye, Armenia and Azerbaijan to the south. Family traditions are strong across the region, and Georgia is no exception. In 2014, the year births peaked, 98 in every 100 Georgian adults told the World Values Survey that family was very important in their life, compared with 92 in 100 across the 59 other countries in that round of the survey (Inglehart et al., 2014). However, births have fallen every year since, eleven years in a row, and there is no single reason for it.

Hatched: Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region, occupied by Russia. Map: Natural Earth; outlines of the occupied territories: OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).

Families start later, weddings wait for a job and a home, young people leave or want to leave, and the skills they take with them are never counted. Each of these problems has its own causes and its own costs, and when they are told all at once, they blur together. The series therefore examines them one at a time. Each part isolates a single problem, sets out what the data show, considers why it arises, and estimates what it costs the country.

Before you start

From the Soviet Union to today

Until 1991, Georgia was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union. It declared independence on 9 April 1991, so the series begins there and describes Georgia as an independent state; the comparable yearly data on births start a little later, in 1994. For a short overview of the years since, it is worth singling out a few events, because they shaped the country directly: both its internal development and its international position. Decisions about marriage and children are never made in isolation. Each of these events changed living conditions, or the outlook for them, and with it how certain the future looked. That is exactly what young couples weigh before they start a family.

Contents

  1. 01

    The families that never start

    After eleven years of decline, births in Georgia hit a record low in 2025: 22,768 fewer babies than in 2014. Most of the missing are first babies.

    About 5 min

  2. 02

    Two kinds of waiting

    Not all waiting is bad news. Waiting to marry can mean a degree and a career, or a fear of what comes next, and in the statistics the two look the same.

    About 6 min

  3. 03

    The missing foundations

    Waiting makes sense when the future is unclear. For young Georgians, the uncertainty has three sources.

    About 5 min

  4. 04

    A door that never closes

    From 2012 to 2023, more Georgians left than came back in every year but one, with a record in 2023. Since 2024 the flow has turned, yet the wish to leave has hardly changed.

    About 3 min

  5. 05

    The hidden part of the brain drain iceberg

    The statistics see only the tip of the iceberg: the money emigrants send home. What skilled emigrants take with them stays below the surface.

    About 3 min

  6. 06

    Can the baby bust end?

    Low fertility is a world trend and emigration is the post-Soviet story. In Georgia, the registered fall in fertility is among the fastest, and the Baltic states show that emigration can turn.

    About 6 min

References