Published August 13th, 2009 by Future Atlas
A Fertility Rebound
A researcher has found that fertility may go up again after countries reach a high level of development.
The pattern has long been that fertility is declining pretty much everywhere, and in the developed world is has dropped below replacement levels — about 2.1 babies per woman — in many countries.
Lower fertility has many societal, economic, and environmental benefits, but rapid fertility drops drive rapid “aging” of a society, with rising ratios of seniors to workers.
According to Rob Stein in the Washington Post, Hans-Peter Kohler found that countries which reach a high quality of life often increase their birthrates. The threshold is a human development index (HDI) of 0.9, which reflects high levels of income, longevity, and education.
Kohler speculates that the key may be social structures and employment situations that enable women both to work and have children. This would explain, he notes, why Japan has not achieved this fertility rebound, given its high level of gender inequality.
Immigration could clearly play a factor, as most developed countries (but not Japan) have greatly increased immigration in recent decades, but Kohler says it cannot account for the full effect — and this would not explain why Canada has not had such a rebound.
Sociologist S. Philip Morgan casts some doubt on the development-driven theory, telling the Post that other factors could be at work, such as ideological changes. (These two ideas are not necessarily contradictory; development is an important driver of ideological change, according to theorists such as Ronald Inglehart.)
(Image courtesy yananine, Flickr)