ELI5- Why do people in poorer countries have more children than those in developed countries?
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Less education for woman. This probably the best single predictor of it, more educated and career oriented woman will have kids earlier and tend to have more kids as well. That’s why even though Scandinavian countries provided crazy amount of benefit for woman, and Singapore paid their citizen to have more kids, it’s failed.
It is not necessarily bad things though
There are a range of reasons for this.
A simple reason is that contraception and family planning services are harder to access in poor countries. That means it’s harder for people to have fewer children, even if they want to.
There are also economic reasons to have or not to have children. In poorer countries children are more likely to be viewed as an economic asset. They can work and contribute to the family’s earnings at an earlier age. In the absence of effective social security or pensions they can support their parents when they get old (or ill).
In addition, the “opportunity cost” of having children is lower. Having children takes time away from other things you could be doing, particularly working. People, particularly women, tend to earn more in wealthier countries. So they lose more money by having children.
Speaking of women, wealthier countries tend to have more gender equality. That means that the earnings of women higher – and they’re more likely to work in the first place – and the opportunity cost of having children is higher. It also means women have more control over their fertility: that is, more ability to control whether to have children or not (or to control the risk of getting pregnant). And generally women prefer to take fewer risks and having fewer children than men.
More complicated, and linked in with these factors are cultural factors. For example, having a large family being a sign of status. Or the willingness and ability of relatives and neighbours to help with childcare.
There’s also the question of when people get married, live together or get into committed relationships. People are more likely to have children when they’re in this kind of relationship, so the earlier in life it happens the more children they have. I believe this tends to be later in wealthier countries, but I don’t know much about this, so I can’t really talk about it.
*Edit: I completely forgot child mortality rates, as pointed out in /u/Target880’s post.*
There are many reasons, one major is if you live where there are high child mortality rate you need to have more children to have some that reach adulthood. In less developed countries the retirement/elder care plan is that your children take care of you so you do what to have children that reach adulthood for selfish reasons.
The huge population growth that you can see often is the result of child mortality is reduced but the cultural norm of how many children you should have lags for something like a generation.
Look for example at [https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$bubble$encoding$y$data$concept=children_per_woman_total_fertility&space@=geo&=time;;&scale$domain:null&zoomed:null&type:null;;&x$data$concept=child_mortality_0_5_year_olds_dying_per_1000_born&source=sg&space@=geo&=time;;&scale$domain:null&zoomed:null&type:null;;&frame$speed:100;&trail$data$filter$markers$usa=1800&gbr=1800&ind=1800&nga=1800&fra=1800;;;;;;;;&chart-type=bubbles&url=v2](https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$bubble$encoding$y$data$concept=children_per_woman_total_fertility&space@=geo&=time;;&scale$domain:null&zoomed:null&type:null;;&x$data$concept=child_mortality_0_5_year_olds_dying_per_1000_born&source=sg&space@=geo&=time;;&scale$domain:null&zoomed:null&type:null;;&frame$speed:100;&trail$data$filter$markers$usa=1800&gbr=1800&ind=1800&nga=1800&fra=1800;;;;;;;;&chart-type=bubbles&url=v2)
I picked UK, US, France, India, and Nigeria as examples You can see babies per woman plotted versus child mortality over time. There is a trend for child mortality to reduce first and then a number of children a woman has. You will see that in what are rich countries today the number of children born in the 19th century was like in poor countries in more recent times.
Another large factor is access to, knowledge about, and acceptance of family planning. People will have sex and you need to take action to not get pregnant, if you do not the result will be lots of children.
Giving women access to and the ability to use what is needed for family planing is an efficient way to reduce the number of children born. This is not forcing anyone to do anything just giving them the option.
Look at for example [https://www.worldvision.ca/stories/why-do-the-poor-have-large-families](https://www.worldvision.ca/stories/why-do-the-poor-have-large-families) for more info
In poor countries, you give birth to kids with a view to bringing you more hands to make food for you. You are not going to (be able to) put much effort on them anyway. In developed country you sacrifice your own living standard in order to compete with other parents on money investment on kids to make them grow. So the choice is clear.
Upvote me. This is the genuine ELI5. 😛
Higher infant mortality, less access to contraception, access to abortion may be limited or nonexistent, conservative societies that frown upon the use of contraception, even condoms, poorer sexual educationso more accidental, unplanned pregnancies
Lots of reasons. I’ll just list 3 that are very important and account for most of the reasons, but it is important to understand how all of these fit inter-connectedly and there isn’t just one reason. It is multiple societal factors.
1. People in countries with less money usually see kids as a resource to make more money through manual labor jobs. So, having more kids provides an economic advantage. In more developed countries this is rarely the case.
2. In less developed countries, women typically have little education and strictly defined gender roles. It is a fact that when women have more access to education and more social mobility then they tend to have less children.
3. Lack of sex education and access to contraceptives. Less developed countries typically struggle to inform their citizens how to have safe sex and/or provide access to common methods of controlling the birth rate in developed countries such as condoms, birth control, plan b, abortion, etc…
Oh I know this one because I’m from poor family, the answer is free labour and the huge amount of help parents get when the kid grows up
I don’t know if it’s allowed to post a video, but Hans Rosling describes it well in this TED talk.
Poorer countries tend to have more traditional cultures where the women can’t refuse sex.
Poorer countries often have less access to birth control that women control.
Poorer agrarian countries often are benefitted by large families. Children become free laborers after a few years and don’t incur the expenses that children in more developed countries have, such as phones and computers.
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