I understand that the more educated people are more aware of the responsibilities and risks of having children and they use protection more etc. but why is it ALWAYS that more literate and rich populations have lower birth rates? At one point, shouldn’t the literate and able people have children to contribute to the future of their countries?
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The gist is that when women and girls are provided educations that give them economic opportunities they often take those opportunities.
Without those opportunities the “option” available to women is “get married and have kids”. Because women in this scenario have extremely limited economic value they’re a liability to their parents rather than an asset, so their broke-as-fuck parents (with limited education themselves) are strongly motivated to marry them off ASAP so someone else is responsible for providing for them. Once married, with limited education for both husband and wife, her role distilled down to having and raising kids.
Providing education leads to opportunities for employment that give women and girls economic value. This reduces motivation to marry them off as soon as possible, and once they are married off provides them with ability to have employment that gives them value to their husbands other than as a baby factory. The husbands in these scenarios are also more likely to be educated, so both husband and wife will also have more knowledge and ability to plan families so can defer having children and limit how many children they have to instead have them when they can better afford to.
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