Eli5: Why do some countries have high fertility rates and others low? (In 2024)
In: Biology
In poor/low-tech countries, high fertility rates are the norm because child mortality rates are brutal. If you and your spouse hope to even have two children who grow up to replace you, you need 6-ish births because it’s so common for children to die.
Once a country is wealthier and has good enough health care that most children survive, women get to have the number of kids they *want* to have, instead of the number they *need* to have – and worldwide, when they have a choice, most go for the zero-to-three range.
(When people suddenly move from one country to another, they don’t adopt the lower number right away; there’s usually a generation or maybe two where they still do what’s normal and expected where they grew up. But they trend toward the norm of the culture they’re living in.)
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