NEW YORK TIME Opinion: …First, as noted, fertility decline is associated nearly everywhere with greater rights and opportunities for women. The deferral of marriage and the reduction of births to two, one or none across so much of the world — and, again, in countries that are still far from rich — are broadly consistent with the higher educational attainment and career aspirations of young women. It is no surprise that the hand-wringers over fertility decline are usually men.
Second, the work forces of societies with low-to-moderate fertility rates often achieve higher levels of productivity than do higher fertility societies. This is one reason China’s economic growth far outstripped India’s from 1970 to 2010 — a period when fertility declined rapidly in China (though only partly because of the one-child policy, now being relaxed) but did not decline as much in most of India…
Third, by enhancing the employment and career experiences of young adults, lower fertility can also bring about greater social and political stability. High-fertility societies commonly produce large numbers of young adults who have trouble finding productive employment — many experts have attributed everything from terrorism to the Arab Spring to this “youthquake” of disaffected young adults in the Middle East and North Africa — but this begins to change 20 to 30 years after fertility rates start to decline… (more)
EDITOR: Article merits being read in full. Birth control, better health care, lower death rates and forms of ‘social security’ are major factors for the decline. How do we know? Fifty-six years ago as a graduate student, we helped with research on perhaps the first article on the subject.
