How fertility is solving the world’s problems

Some might say it’s a Godsend. In almost every country in the world, fertility rates are dropping, meaning people are having fewer children.

It first happened in the rich world. Now it’s happening in the developing world – but a lot faster.

And it’s making people wealthier. Demographic studies have shown that lower fertility causes wealth, and wealth causes lower fertility.

It’s this upward spiral that is arguably the world’s most important social trend, and could naturally solve some of our most fundamental problems.

Fertility rates

The fertility rate is the number of children an average woman is likely to have in her childbearing years (15-49yrs).

To maintain the same population, each woman needs to have 2 children to replace herself and her partner. This is called the replacement fertility rate.

In practice, though, the replacement rate is actually about 2.1 because there are slightly fewer girls born, and some girls die before their childbearing years (in poor countries it’s upwards of 3 due to higher infant mortality).

At the moment, the global fertility rate is about 2.5, so the population (now about 6.8 billion) is still growing.

But things are changing. In 1960, the global fertility rate was 5. At some time between 2020 and 2050, it will fall below the global replacement rate.

Already about half the world’s population is living in countries with a fertility rate below the replacement rate (meaning not replacing itself).

Due to this trend, the world’s population is expected to peak at around 9 billion in 2050, and then start decreasing again.

How has this happened?

Around the late 1700s, the Industrial Revolution took hold in Britain and then spread to Europe and North America. People went from ploughing fields by hand to working in factories.

For a family, the benefit of many hands in the field was replaced by the cost of too many mouths to feed. And with the introduction of government pensions, you didn’t need as many kids to look after you in your old age.

As a result, fertility levels fell sharply in Europe and North America. People realised there was a net gain financially of having less children. Now most of the rich world has a fertility rate of 2 or below.

That process is now happening in the developing world as these countries are becoming more modern and industrialised.

But this time it’s happening a lot faster. For example, the drop in fertility rate from 5 to 2 took 130 years in Britain, compared with 20 years in South Korea.

In Iran, it fell from 7 in 1984 to 1.9 in 2006 as a result of its increased prosperity and education (one of the best in the Middle East). This rapid drop is taking place all over the developing world.

A lot of this is to do with the increase in female education. As well as a more informed use of contraception, more women are interested in careers, rather than a life bearing multiple children.

And so with both parents working, the lost income of someone at home must be weighed up against the benefits of another child.

Another factor is the special case of China, where a lower fertility rate was enforced with its ‘one-child policy’ that began in the early 1970s. It now has between 300-400 million less people as a result.

So what does this mean for the world?

Firstly, there is almost a perfect correlation between falling fertility rates and increased living standards.

A smaller family makes it easier to enter the middle class. Furthermore, less children means any inheritance is split more generously for each child – allowing growth in what is called ‘capital per head.’

Secondly, the population’s dependency ratio is dropping because there are fewer children relative to the number of people in the work force.

Unfortunately, this switch from high to low fertility produces a bulge in the population. The rich world is currently experiencing this with the huge ‘baby boom’ generation born after WW2.

They are entering retirement now, and due to their low fertility rates, there are less working adults paying taxes to fund their healthcare and pension costs (the argument to counter this is that the baby boomers should have saved more because they’ve had fewer kids to spend their money on.)

Finally, and perhaps most crucially, it means there’s less likely to be a permanently increasing population using the planet’s limited resources, such as fertile land, water and oil etc. This in turn means there will be less people polluting the environment.

The population trend will not solve this issue on its own, however. Better technology to limit our per-person consumption of these resources and good governance to make that happen will still need to occur.

But right now, humanity is quietly going about fertility the right way, and fixing a lot of its problems in the process.

By The Casual Truth