Income and fertility

Graph of total fertility rate vs. GDP (PPP) per capita of the corresponding country, 2015[1][2]

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.[3][4] 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.[5] 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."[6] 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.[7]

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 developed country with per capita GDP of US$32,600 in 2009, was 1.22 children born per woman. But total fertility rate in Ethiopia, with a per capita GDP of $900 in 2009, was 6.17 children born per woman.[8]

  1. ^ "Field Listing: Total Fertility Rate". The World Factbook. Archived from the original on 2013-08-11. Retrieved 2016-04-24.
  2. ^ "Country Comparison: GDP – Per Capita (PPP)". The World Factbook. Archived from the original on April 27, 2015. Retrieved 2016-04-24.
  3. ^ Wrong, Dennis H. (1958). "Trends in Class Fertility in Western Nations". Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science. 24 (2): 216–229. doi:10.2307/138769. ISSN 0315-4890. JSTOR 138769. Archived from the original on 2024-01-24. Retrieved 2023-05-28.
  4. ^ Simon, Julian L. (1969). "The effect of income on fertility". Population Studies. 23 (3): 327–341. doi:10.1080/00324728.1969.10405289. ISSN 0032-4728. PMID 22073952. Archived from the original on 2024-01-24. Retrieved 2023-05-28.
  5. ^ Vandenbroucke, Guillaume (December 13, 2016). "The Link between Fertility and Income". Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis (USA). Archived from the original on April 15, 2023. Retrieved November 30, 2017.
  6. ^ Weil, David N. (2004). Economic Growth. Addison-Wesley. p. 111. ISBN 978-0-201-68026-3.
  7. ^ Vogl, Tom S. (2015-07-20). "Differential Fertility, Human Capital, and Development". The Review of Economic Studies. 83 (1): 365–401. doi:10.1093/restud/rdv026. ISSN 0034-6527. Archived from the original on 2024-01-24. Retrieved 2023-05-28.
  8. ^ "Ethiopia" (PDF). A Country Status Report on Health and Poverty (In Two Volumes) the World Bank Group Africa Region Human Development & Ministry of Health, Ethiopia. II: Main Report. July 2005. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-12-17. Retrieved 2018-04-12.