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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There is a kind of eb and flow to birth rate.
It used to be, back in older times, you would have as many kids as you could to increase the likelihood that as many as possible would make it to adulthood.
As medicines got better, we increased the rate at which our offspring made it to adulthood. However, the social norms took time to catch up. You were still expected to have many children.
Globally this explains why birth rates in richer countries are lower than in developing countries. The developing world is still behind on that benefit of medicine, so they also need their social norms to change. The penetration of increasing medicines is indirectly linked to the increase in literacy rates.
On a more local level, the difference between the rich and poor having children is basically tied to how much they see a child impacting their livelihood. The extremely poor actually get more benefits from social programs if they have more children, so it’s not really much of a factor for them. They can actually end up with more in their pockets at the end of the day with a child. In the meanwhile, the people with *some* money who don’t qualify for those programs have to worry about the cost of children themselves.
This is especially evident in the US, where the poorest people qualify for socialized healthcare. They are not out of pocket for the birth of their child. However, go up one class level, and suddenly people need to save up $10,000 or more for the birth of their child. This will restrict how many children they can have.
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