Aum Kezang had nine children. Today, her youngest daughter, Tashi, 30, has two girls. Whether those two girls will marry, or have children at all, is something no one in the household can assume.
In this contrast between mother and daughter lies a story larger than any statistic. Aum Kezang passed away at 54. She never went to school and spent her life as a farmer, shaped by a time when large families were both necessity and norm. Tashi is a graduate, and a small business owner navigating a very different Bhutan, one defined by opportunity, mobility, and choice.
It is in this intergenerational shift that the Prime Minister’s remarks in Parliament find their most human expression: the link between development and declining fertility. What once appeared as an abstract demographic trend is now visible in living rooms, villages, and family stories across the country.
Over the past 35 years, Bhutan has reportedly seen births decline by nearly 63 percent, from 15,580 in 1990 to 5,784 in 2025. Behind these numbers is a deeper transformation that has reshaped how Bhutanese families are formed, sustained, and imagined.
Bhutan’s development story over the past four decades is ultimately a story of simultaneous rise and fall, rising incomes, education, and life expectancy on one hand, and falling fertility on the other. It is a transition that mirrors patterns seen in advanced economies, but in Bhutan, it has unfolded within a much shorter span of time.
In 1980, Bhutan’s economy was valued at roughly US$0.13 billion. It was largely agrarian, with limited infrastructure, minimal urbanisation, and restricted access to modern services. Today, GDP has expanded to over US$3 billion, marking a more than twenty-fold increase.
This economic transformation has gone hand in hand with major gains in human development. Life expectancy, which stood at around 47 years in the early 1980s, has now risen to approximately 72 years. This improvement reflects expanded healthcare access, stronger maternal and child health systems, improved immunisation coverage, and the establishment of a nationwide primary healthcare network that has brought basic services closer to most communities.
Education has followed a similarly transformative path. Literacy levels, which were below 30 percent in the 1980s, have risen to more than 70 percent today. The most profound shift, however, has been among women, whose increased educational attainment has not only reshaped household decisions but also redefined social and economic roles within families.
Healthcare access has also expanded dramatically. From a period when Bhutan had only a handful of hospitals and very limited medical personnel, the country now enjoys near-universal primary healthcare coverage, estimated at over 90 percent. This expansion has reduced infant mortality, improved maternal health outcomes, and fundamentally altered the logic of family size in Bhutanese society.
It is against this backdrop of rising income, education, and health access that Bhutan’s fertility decline becomes most significant. In the 1980s, Bhutanese women had an average of six to seven children. By the early 2000s, this had fallen to around three to four children. By the 2010s, fertility had dropped close to replacement levels, and today it stands at approximately 1.4 to 1.8 births per woman, well below the replacement threshold of 2.1.
The relationship between these indicators reveals a clear structural pattern. As GDP increased more than twenty times, life expectancy rose by nearly 25 years, literacy more than doubled, and healthcare became widely accessible, fertility declined by more than 70 percent. This is not an accidental correlation, but a textbook demographic transition shaped by development itself.
Behind the numbers lie changing social realities. Higher education, especially among women, has delayed marriage and reduced desired family size. Urbanisation and rising living costs have shifted preferences toward smaller households. At the same time, greater participation in the formal economy has changed the opportunity cost of raising children, particularly for women balancing work and family life.
What makes Bhutan’s experience distinctive is not only the direction of change, but its speed. In many countries, fertility decline unfolds over generations after sustained industrialisation. In Bhutan, however, the transition has been compressed into a relatively short period, closely tied to rapid expansion in education, health services, and state-led development.
However, this transformation also carries new questions. While declining fertility reflects success in human development, it also signals a gradual ageing of the population in the long run. In a small-population economy like Bhutan, this raises important considerations about future labour supply, productivity growth, and dependency ratios.
Bhutan’s development trajectory therefore presents a dual reality. It is, on one hand, a success story of human development; marked by longer lives, better education, improved health, and rising incomes. On the other, it marks the beginning of a new demographic era defined by smaller families and slower population growth.
Seen through the lens of Aum Kezang and Tashi, the transition is not just statistical, it is deeply personal. One generation measured progress in the number of children. The next measures it in education, opportunity, and choice. Between those two worlds, Bhutan has changed quietly but profoundly, reshaping not only its economy, but the very structure of family life itself.
Ugyen Tenzin, Thimphu
