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Concept
Income and fertility
Summary
Income and fertility is the association between monetary gain on one hand, and the tendency to produce offspring on the other. There is generally an inverse correlation between income and the total fertility rate within and between nations. The higher the degree of education and GDP per capita of a human population, subpopulation or social stratum, the fewer children are born in any developed country. In a 1974 United Nations population conference in Bucharest, Karan Singh, a former minister of population in India, illustrated this trend by stating "Development is the best contraceptive." In 2015, this thesis was supported by Vogl, T.S., who concluded that increasing the cumulative educational attainment of a generation of parents was by far the most important predictor of the inverse correlation between income and fertility based on a sample of 48 developing countries.
Generally, a developed country has a lower fertility rate while a less economically developed country has a higher fertility rate. For example, the total fertility rate for Japan, a more developed country, with per capita GDP of US900 in 2009, was 6.17 children born per woman.
Herwig Birg has called the inverse relationship between income and fertility a "demo-economic paradox". Evolutionary biology predicts that more successful individuals (and by analogy countries) should seek to develop optimum conditions for their life and reproduction. However, in the last half of the 20th century it has become clear that the economic success of developed countries is being counterbalanced by a demographic failure, a sub-replacement fertility that may prove destructive for their future economies and societies.
It is hypothesized that the observed trend in many countries of having fewer children has come about as a response to increased life expectancy, reduced child mortality, improved female literacy and independence, and urbanization that all result from increased GDP per capita, consistent with the demographic transition model.
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