Why isnt it just 2? What factors make up the 0.1?
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Just under half the population born is female. If every woman has two children, then a population would be sustained. However, not every woman survives to have children, and not every woman chooses to have children. Therefore, the number of births required to sustain a population has to be higher than two, and 0.1 just happens to be a reasonable increase to sustain most populations with low amounts of child mortality.
That’s not to say 2.1 births per woman would sustain all population levels. If an area has higher child mortality rates, for example, then more people would die before reaching reproductive age, requiring the surviving women to bear more children to sustain the population.
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