I understand that many women will not have kids or will have only one kid, or that child mortality is involved but still a fertility rate of 2 means that ON AVERAGE every woman will have 2 kids. This means that every woman and man will be replaced, including the children that die young if the rate of 2 lasts (the newborn females will also have on average two kids). So why isn’t a fertility rate of 2 enough to replace the population?
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If you view replacement rate through a different lens, it’s basically trying to answer: *How many children should a person capable of giving birth give birth to in order to produce at least one offspring that will be capable of giving birth themself?* To put it more bluntly: *How many live births should a fertile woman expect to have to produce a girl who’ll grow up to be able to give birth to new children?* Not only does this question depend on the probability of giving birth to a girl, but it also depends on giving birth to a girl who will also grow to reproductive age (and thus become the next generation’s “person capable of giving birth” in the question). So it would make sense that this probability will be less than 0.5 and that the answer will be slightly more than 2.0. And yes, giving birth to a girl that will die too early to have children herself is still considered giving birth.
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