Free exchange

Baby monitor

In poor countries lower fertility is usually good for growth. But it can also increase inequality

See article

Readers' comments



In reality, fertility rates even among middle income (GDP per capita PPP) or low income stagnated economies (like the weird economy of Iran where the business class is the biggest supporter of the mullahs because they can continue have a protected market and low fuel costs) have fallen to 2.1 or lower. While some high income countries have steadily increased fertility rates (some from 1.6-1.7 to 2.1 like France), allowing them to not require immigration even that is only replacement levels. NOT the old 4 to 5 children in post-war North American baby boom. Real income growth comes from GDP per capita growth and GDP improves due to labour productivity (or even better total factor productivity but that can barely be measured). Therefore while I can concur the best population is when it's 2.1 or soon 2.05 as better infant mortality rates go to all countries, the best economy which increases income and wealth the best is one which emphasizes human capital and improves labour productivity!

Jane OSullivan

A dangerously contorted take on the issue. They almost got there in the final paragraph, but the rest of the article reads as if efforts to reduce fertility will generate income inequality, and by implication, make the poor poorer. This is not true - it is high fertility that makes the poor poorer, regardless of what the less poor are doing. If the less poor are reducing their fertility in the mean time, they will get richer by comparison.

I haven't consulted the cited Harvard study, but it is presented as if the fertility decline in each country is a phenomenon independent of any programs or policies around family planning, and only influenced by the overall affluence of the society. This is also untrue.

This seems to be another study claiming a surprising revelation by measuring what many of us would consider self-evident. If you leave fertility decline to the process of 'demographic transition' (wait for wealth to change people's family size preference) then of course the rich will be first to do it, and because high fertility generates poverty (which the 'demographic transitionists' don't acknowledge, although this article does to some extent) income inequality will widen. BUT this isn't the story in those countries that adopted active family planning programs. They reach the poor simultaneously, and by reducing the oversupply of labour, they reduce income inequality.

It would be more appropriate to title the article 'A laissez-faire approach to fertility reduction can increase inequaltiy'.

A. Andros

In today's NYT Dave Leonhardt suggested -- just suggested -- that the decline in the working population (the reasons for which he did not cite but can be pretty easily located in abortion and contraception) was one reason behind the lack of vigor in the American economy. He concentrated on the reduction in available workers and entrepeneurs which, naturally, caused several to comment that with 8% unemployment there should be no shortage of workers.

What he could have said, but did not, is that the effect of a reduction in rate of population growth also manifests itself (as I wrote below) in a reduction in both consumers and taxpayers. The shortage of work for those willing to work is relatable to an increasing shortage (e.g. family formation and indigenous birthrates) of those able to buy. An increasing tax burden (which now seems inevitable) is, likewise, relatable to a given amount of debt loaded on the shoulders of fewer taxpayers.

All this suggests that inequality is due at least as much to a reduction in the population growth as to over-population. It also suggests that those societies with a low rate of reproduction (esp. Europe and Japan) have a bleak economic future.

Such suggestions are not popular today in this P.C. and largely anti-child climate. However they may well be borne out in economic statistics for years to come.

Jane OSullivan in reply to A. Andros

Dear A. Andros,
The per capita supply of people will always be 1. It is the per capita supply of everything else we should be concerned about, which is the total available (within planetary limits) divided by the number of us.
As for inequality, nothing drives it so much as the oversupply of labour.


They kill female fetuses in India. Or kill female babies at birth.
While it lowers the speed of increase of the population, it is not humanitarian.


With increased automation, we simply no longer need so many people to do the same work that needs to be done. Look at India and its surplus population. The government simply can't create enough jobs to accommodate the rise in population. Overtime, high unemployment will lead to chaos in these developing and fast (population) growing countries.

As the surplus population from poor countries like India, Phillipines, Mexico, Guatemala etc. emigrate to rich countries, they bring their problems to the new countries. Unemployment is so high in the US because we can't create enough jobs for everyone, not just native citizens but all the millions of immigrants who continue to come in unabated.

Unfortunately, the people who realize this and curb their reproduction are the very people we want to have more children, the well educated, smart and wealthy ones. The ones who are reproducing unabated are those uneducated and/or on welfare. We are growing at the bottom of the pyramid the world over. This coupled with political correctness and liberal policies championed by the left are starting to drag us all on a downward spiral, quite possibly irreversable.

Bad Serendipity in reply to iThinker

This is the aspect of economics which worries me most. “ECONOMIES benefit when people start having smaller families.” What is the purpose of the economy? Is it an end in itself, to be benefited? Again; “Look at India and its surplus population”. Who are the surplus population of India? What makes a person surplus? Surplus to what? The economy should have people at its heart. When people are viewed like this, as being servants of this mythical beast ‘The Economy’, then the cart is put before the horse, and does not work.

A. Andros

A decline in fertility quickly can become too much of a good thing. What is in the best immediate interest of the individual, or even family, is not necessarily what best serves a society in the long run. One commenter stated: "if we voluntarily have fewer children then there is more to go around and less competition. " Now, if you remove the words "fewer children" and replace them with "fewer customers" or "fewer producers" or "fewer taxpayers" then the statement no longer makes sense. ("If only our businesses had fewer customers, how much more prosperous we would be!")

The fact is, children inevitably grow up to be customers, producers and taxpayers. There is an odd sort of conceit in much population thinking that posits that people, children especially, are some sort of threat to the population!

Civilization is always something of a Ponzi scheme in which a producing population (the young) bears the burden of an aging population. In the past, this was accomplished by taking in grandparents while today it means funding old-age pensions. Regardless, once the ratio of younger workers to the elderly falls precipitously then the burden of an aging population can become onerous for even a prosperous society. Japan is the most notorious example of this phenomenon but America may face it too. Paul Ryan has been roundly excoriated in the liberal press because he is insisting that we at least confront the problems posed by underfunded and actuarially unsound pension and medical plans. Whether his solutions are correct can be disputed. Still, he is one of the lone voices insisting that we face reality.

China is another example of a place where stringent limits on population increase may have created a demographic bomb -- an implosion. The rate of increase in that population has slowed because of the one-child policy -- with ominous implications for future economic growth. At the same time, the imbalance between male and female babies due to gender-selective abortions has created an enormous population of unattached males -- the least stable part of any population.

A decline in fertility probably does, for a lengthy period, create an imbalance in wealth as those with fewer mouths to feed live better than those with a great many mouths to feed. In fact, the obvious path for any couple wanting to maximize its own wealth is to have no "ankle-biters" (what we used to call "kids") of their own. And, if everyone followed this route there would quickly be an end to the population itself.

An imbalance in wealth is not a good thing -- but it is not necessarily a bad thing either. It is a phase a nation may go through as its citizens adjust to new economic circumstances. It is vexing that there is an imbalance in wealth -- it is not the end of the world.

Much more worrying, though, is what happens to a society when children are seen as such a burden that they cease to be produced in numbers necessarily to grow, let alone sustain, a population. Let's watch Japan, Russia and China in this regard -- their examples may be illustrative.

ImperatorMundi in reply to A. Andros

First of all, it must be said that the article talks about fertility as an issue of 3rd world countries. It's obvious that in 1st world countries the problem is different and it doesn't make sense to talk about reducing fertility to boost the economy.
Anyway, let's assume that we were talking about reducing the fertility rate in DEVELOPED countries. The main risk of a developed country is that there'll be not enough taxpayers to substain the old generation of retiring people (and that's what is going on in Japan but also in some european countries, and it's the biggest issue China has to face, either).
But that's quite all the problem. Having fewer people living in a country is a problem only in relation with them mainteining their retiring parents, not by itself.
Let me explain this: once the old generation has passed away, having 100 million inhabitants instead of 200 million in a country it's not a problem if the population is again properly redistributed.
The issue is particularly a problem for countries that have a public retirement system, such as Japan. Because they'll not only have to face health and social problems about the "baby boomers" generation retiring (a problem by itself, having the children to take care also economically for the parents), but they're going to have also a retirement system close to bankruptcy, thus affecting government spending (since it works on the principle that the current workforce pays the pension of the current retired people - different from the principle of a private system of retirement, in which a person simply saves money through a company for HIS/HER retirement only).

Connect The Dots

Have as many children as will be long term SUSTAINABLE.

For most Advanced Nations that is about 2.1 children.
For most Developing Nations it is enough births to overcome high childhood mortality.

It is like Porridge--too hot or too cold is bad.

Too many OR too few is unstable.
Seek an equilibrium.


Its simple really - if we voluntarily have fewer children then there is more to go around and less competition. Technological progress may possibly be slower with less people but so what. There are estimated to be more people in poverty now than ever purely because ther are so many more of us and technology has NOT actually kept up. In addition destruction of natural habitat, extinction of species has intensified leaving our descendants with a world that has less not more.

Hugh Cameron

The article neglects the role of urbanisation.

As an example, Uganda’s overall fertility rate is close to 7 children per woman and its average per-person GDP is about $500; but in Kampala-Entebbe, comprising around 7% of the national population, the fertility rate is half the national average and per-person GDP is approximately $3,000. This is because most businesses and most paid jobs are located in the city and the city dwellers, who see education as the key to similar or better living standards for their children, cannot afford school fees for more than 3 or 4.

Meanwhile Uganda’s rural families, overwhelmingly subsistence farmers, continue having abundant children to help out as rightly noted with sowing and harvesting – and sadly they see little chance that better schooling will increase their harvests.

So while the this article describes the inequality as between rich and poor, it is really between urban and rural. The best way to treat it is for cities to grow. Keeping the masses back down on the farm only ensures they will stay poor and increase in number. (Incidentally, health care is better in the cities, and easier to deliver.)

Almost all new economic activity originates in cities. Urbanisation has created wealth around the world, and then wealth cuts birth rates. This has been the rich world’s path starting 200 years ago, a trend that will not reverse. Africa will follow the same route.

And the best way to foster urban growth is to give urban immigrants title to the patches of land they end up living on. This gives them a bit of capital to borrow against and build on, and a stake in responsible local government.

Jane OSullivan in reply to Hugh Cameron

There is a tendency to overextrapolate the difference between urban and rural communities. While the proportion of people living in cities is increasing, the number living in rural areas is not decreasing. As long as their fertility doesn't decline, the number in excess of replacement will not, and the flow into city slums will continue. The resulting oversupply of labour keeps wages at bare survival levels, driving income inequality.
It may be easier to deliver health care in cities, but the health outcomes for urban poor are worse than for rural poor, and their growing numbers consume all the health resources, diminishing capacity to deliver services to the bush. The growth of cities also leads to greater per capita wealth when measured in dollars, but the poor who move to cities are exchanging a lot of free environmental services for a total dependence on purchased goods, and they are not necessarily better off for it.



Products and events


Take our weekly news quiz to stay on top of the headlines

