Why birth rates are dropping everywhere

The really interesting trend I think in. recent years is the number of much lower. income countries that are starting to. fall below that replacement level. You. can see on the chart India there not a. rich country at all. India had a a. fertility rate of about three and a half. at the turn of the century. It had a. fertility rate six years ago. It's now. uh sub replacement rate. It's true of. most of uh South America. It's true of a. large part of the rest of the world and. really the only countries with uh above.

replacement fertility rates now are in. central Asia. There's a big sweep of. countries there and in subsahara and. Africa where you still get some very. high fertility rates, but it's an. increasingly small group of countries. that that are actually above that 2.1. level. There might be this idea that um. what's happened to fertility rates. reflects what we've seen among more. educated and and richer women, but. actually this is a much more broad-based. trend, isn't it? >> Historically, if you go back further and. further, the the norm was always that.

rich women had more children than poor. women. You could afford the resources to. have more children, so you did. Uh poor. women couldn't, and so they didn't. That. changed in the 20th century and you saw. poorer and less educated women having. more children than highly educated and. richer women. That has now changed. significantly and you've seen a. convergence across income levels are. sort of balancing out. You look at the. US for example, more than half of the. decline in fertility in the US since. 1990 has been down to mothers under 19.

having fewer children. This is obviously. something that you know is a sort of. social and political goal. It's not. something uh that people didn't want to. happen. You've seen that balancing out. and actually now rich and highly. educated women in the US have slightly. more children than uh some of the lower. income groups. >> I find that stat absolutely astounding. I have to say that in the US half of the. fertility decline is essentially the. loss of teen pregnancies because it runs. up so much against the kind of. stereotypical explanation that people.

have in their mind that this is about. career women not having children. >> [music].