The 2020 Childfree Survey Results (2024)

Here's what the surveyors said about Location Data:
"The location responses are largely similar to the 2019 survey with a majority of participants living in a suburban and urban area. 86.24% of participants in the 2020 survey live in urban and suburban regions, with 86.7% of participants living in urban and suburban regions in the 2019 survey. There is likely a multifactorial reason for this, encompassing the younger, educated skew of participants and the easier access to universities and employment, and the fact that a majority of the population worldwide localises [sic] to urban centres [sic]. There may be an element of increased progressive social viewpoints and identities in urban regions, however this would need to be explored further from a sociological perspective to draw any definitive conclusions.

A majority of our participants (57.47%) were born in the USA. The United Kingdom (7.6%), Canada (7.17%), Australia (3.58%) and Germany (2.17%) encompass the next 4 most popular responses. This is largely consistent with the responses in the 2019 survey."

Here's what the surveyors said about General Demographic Data:
"The demographics remain largely consistent with the 2019 survey. However, the 2019 survey collected demographic responses from all participants in the survey, removing those who did not identify as childfree when querying subreddit specific questions, while the 2020 survey only collected responses from people who identified as childfree. This must be considered when comparing results.

82.25% of the participants are under 35, compared with 85% of the subreddit in the 2019 survey. A slight downward trend is noted compared over the last two years suggesting the userbase may be getting older on average. 73.04% of the subreddit identify as female, compared with 71.54% in the 2019 survey. Again, when compared with the 2019 survey, this suggests a slight increase in the number of members who identify as female. This is in contrast to the overall membership of Reddit, estimated at 74% male according to Reddit's Wikipedia page [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddit#Users_and_moderators]. The ratio of members who identify as heterosexual remained consistent, from 54.89% in the 2019 survey to 55.20% in the 2020 survey.

Ethnicity wise, 77% of members identified as primarily Caucasian, consistent with the 2019 results. While the ethnicities noted to be missing in the 2019 survey have been included in the 2020 survey, some users noted the difficulty of responding when fitting multiple ethnicities, and this will be addressed in the 2021 survey."

Here's what the surveyors said about Education Data:
"As it did in the 2019 survey, this section highlights the stereotype of childfree people as being well educated. 2.64% of participants did not complete high school, which is a slight decrease from the 2019 survey, where 4% of participants did not graduate high school. However, 6.02% of participants are under 18, compared with 8.22% in the 2019 survey. 55% of participants have a bachelors [sic] degree or higher, while an additional 23% have completed "some college or university".

At the 2020 survey, the highest percentage of responses under the: What is your degree/major? question fell under "I don't have a degree or a major" (20.12%). Arts and Humanities, and Computer Science have overtaken Health Sciences and Engineering as the two most popular majors. However, the list of majors was pared down to general fields of study rather than highly specific degree majors to account for the significant diversity in majors studied by the childfree community, which may account for the different results."

Here's what the surveyors said about Career and Finance Data:
"Note that 'other', 'I'm a student', 'currently unemployed' and 'I'm out of the work force for health or other reasons' have been disregarded for this part of the evaluation.

Out of the 3729 participants active in the workforce, the majority (1824 or 48.91%) work between 40-50 hours per week with 997 or 26.74% working 30-40 hours weekly. 6.62% work 50 hours or more per week, and 17.73% less than 30 hours.

513 or 10.13% are engaged in managerial responsibilities (ranging from Jr. to Sr. Management).

On a scale of 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest), the overwhelming majority (3340 or 70%) indicated that career plays a very important role in their lives, attributing a score of 7 and higher."

&

"The highest percentage of participants at 21.61% listed themselves as trained professionals.

One of the stereotypes of the childfree is of wealth. However this is not demonstrated in the survey results. 70.95% of participants earn under $60,000 USD per annum, while 87.85% earn under $90,000 per annum. 21.37% are earning under $15,000 per annum. 1065 participants, or 21.10% chose not to disclose this information. It is possible that this may have skewed the results if a significant proportion of these people were our high income earners, but impossible to explore.

A majority of our participants work between 30 and 50 hours per week (75.65%) which is slightly increased from the 2019 survey, where 71.2% of participants worked between 30 and 50 hours per week."

Here's what the surveyors said about Religion and Spirituality Data:
"For the 2020 survey Christianity (the most popular result in 2019) was split into it's major denominations, Catholic, Protestant, Anglican, among others. This appears to be a linguistic/location difference that caused a lot of confusion among some participants. However, Catholicism at 30.76% remained the most popular choice for the religion participants were raised in. However, of our participant's current faith, Aetheism [sic] at 36.23% was the most popular choice. A majority of 78.02% listed their current religion as Aetheist [sic], no religious or spiritual beliefs, or Agnostic.

A majority of participants (61%) rated religion as 'not at all influential' to the childfree choice. This is consistent with the 2019 survey where 62.8% rated religion as 'not at all influential'. Despite the high percentage of participants who identify as aetheist [sic] or agnostic, this does not appear to be related to or have an impact on the childfree choice. "

Here's what the surveyors said about Sterilization Data:
"While just under half of our participants wish to be sterilised [sic], 45.21%, only 12.2% have been successful in achieving sterilisation [sic]. This is likely due to overarching resistance from the medical profession however other factors such as the logistical elements of surgery and the cost may also contribute. There is a slight increase from the percentage of participants sterilised [sic] in the 2019 survey (11.7%). 29.33% of participants do not wish to be or need to be sterilised [sic] suggesting a partial element of satisfaction from temporary birth control methods or non-necessity of contraception due to their current lifestyle practices. Participants who indicated that they do not wish to be sterilised [sic] or haven't achieved sterilisation [sic] were excluded from the percentages where necessary in this section.

Of the participants who did achieve sterilisation [sic], a majority began the search between 19 and 29, with the highest proportion being in the 19-24 age group (35.85%) This is a marked increase from the 2019 survey where 27.3% of people who started the search were between 19-24. This may be due to increased education about permanent contraception or possibly due to an increase in instability around world events.

The majority of participants who sought out and were successful at achieving sterilisation [sic], were however in the 25-29 age group (37.9%). This is consistent with the 2019 survey results.

The time taken between seeking out sterilisation [sic] and achieving it continues to increase, with only 50.46% of participants achieving sterilisation [sic] in under 3 months. This is a decline from the number of participants who achieved sterilisation [sic] in 3 months in the 2019 survey (58.5%). A potential cause of this decrease is to Covid-19 shutdowns in the medical industry leading to an increase in procedure wait times. The proportion of participants who have had one or more doctors refuse to perform the procedure has stayed consistent between the two surveys."

Here's what the surveyors said about Childfreedom Data:
"The main reasons for people choosing the childfree lifestyle are a lack of interest towards parenthood and an aversion towards children which is consistent with the 2019 survey. Of the people surveyed 67.06% are pet owners or involved in a pet's care, suggesting that this lack of interest towards parenthood does not necessarily mean a lack of interest in all forms of caretaking. The community skews towards a dislike of children overall which correlates well with the 87.81% of users choosing 'no, I do not have, did not use to have and will not have a job that makes me heavily interact with children on a daily basis' in answer to, 'do you have a job that heavily makes you interact with children on a daily basis?'. This is an increase from the 2019 survey.

A vast majority of the subreddit identifes [sic] as pro-choice (95.5%), a slight increase from the 2019 results. This is likely due to a high level of concern about bodily autonomy and forced birth/parenthood. However only 55.93% support financial abortion, aka for the non-pregnant person in a relationship to sever all financial and parental ties with a child. This is a marked decrease from the 2019 results, where 70% of participants supported financial abortion.

Most of our users realised [sic] that did not want children young. 58.72% of participants knew they did not want children by the age of 18, with 95.37% of users realising [sic] this by age 30. This correlates well with the age distribution of participants. Despite this early realisation [sic] of our childfree stance, 80.59% of participants have been 'bingoed' at some stage in their lives."