Fertility

Falling Fertility

T HOMAS MALTHUS first published his "Essay on the Principle of Population", in which
he forecast that popula­tion growth would outstrip the world's food supply, in 1798.
His timing was unfortunate, for something started happening around then which made
nonsense of his ideas. As industrialization swept through what is now the deve1oped world , fertility fell sharply, first in France, then in Britain, then throughout Europe and America,
When people got richer, families got smaller; and as families got smaller, people got richer.

Now, something similar is happening in developing coun­tries. Fertility is falling and families are shrinking in places-such as Brazil, Indonesia, and even parts of India—that people think of as teeming with children. The fertility rate of half the world is now 21 or less-the magic number that is consistent with a stable popula­tion and is usually called "the replacement rate of fertility". Sometime between 2020 and 2050 the world's fertility rate will fall below the global replacement rate.