As housing costs, poverty risks, and demographic change reshape Europe’s regions, targeted support for large families is essential to keeping communities vibrant and resilient.
The European Commission will put forward a strategy on the right to stay, focusing on regions and territories. The aim is to identify the key challenges communities face, and the support they need to grow and succeed.
Therefore, the European Large Families Confederation (ELFAC) warmly welcomes the Right to Stay Strategy: Your Region, Your Future. As emphasized by Executive Vice-President Raffaele Fitto, leaving one’s home region should be a choice, never an economic necessity.
Unfortunately, economic pressures are increasingly forcing large families to relocate. The consequences of this displacement are drastic: strong family networks are the bedrock of regional resilience, offering the precise social safety nets and local stability that the Commission seeks to foster. However, these networks are shrinking. In 2024, only 23.6% of European households included children under 18 (Eurostat). Furthermore, Population Europe foresees families becoming more “vertical”—meaning future generations will have fewer siblings and cousins to lean on, but more grandparents and great-grandparents to care for. These shifting demographic structures, combined with intense economic challenges, make it incredibly difficult for large families to remain in their home communities.
Large families face disproportionate structural hurdles to staying in their regions. Spiraling costs related to housing, childcare, education, and transportation frequently price large households out of declining areas. Crucially, the European Commission’s own January 2026 European Employment and Social Outlook report confirms that household size is a severe, determining factor in the risk of exclusion. The report highlights that the poverty rate for families with three or more children stands at 19%—more than double the European average for households with one or two children (8% and 9% respectively). Despite this documented vulnerability, large families remain insufficiently recognized as a specific risk group in territorial development planning.
As detailed in ELFAC’s Housing and Large Families Position Paper, current housing strategies often target low-income or youth demographics while completely dismissing family size as a distinct vulnerability factor, leaving large families heavily exposed to overcrowding and housing exclusion. To reverse the regional divides outlined in the Letta Report, access to essential services—including childcare, healthcare, and adequate housing—must be adapted to the realities of larger households, ensuring that benefits and support do not diminish from the second or third child onwards.
Large families provide the foundational economic and demographic support that aging regions desperately need to break out of low-growth traps. The children raised in these communities today will form tomorrow’s regional labor force and allow rural areas to scale their economic potential. By actively expanding the European Network of Family-Friendly Municipalities—and promoting its established best practices, such as integrating family perspectives into local policies, fostering gender equality, supporting responsible parenthood, driving youth empowerment, and creating local business alliances—the EU can prevent the displacement of large households from their home regions. Utilizing EU family-friendly cities, specialized local training, and shared good practices provides a practical, proven instrument to advance territorial cohesion.
Structurally recognizing and supporting large families is not just a matter of social justice; it is a vital, strategic tool to unlock the long-term competitiveness, economic resilience, and true “Right to Stay” for all of Europe’s regions.
(Author of the contribution: Delia Bousquet, intern of ELFAC)