ABSTRACT
As with mortality, there is a clear statistical relationship at the global scale between fertility and development. Those countries with highest per capita incomes and the most favourable human development index (HDI) tend also to have the lowest fertility (Figure 5.1). Fertility levels are highest in sub-Saharan Africa, and in 2007 were estimated to be highest in Niger with a TFR of 7.1, that is, each woman on average bearing over seven children during her lifetime (see Box 5.1 for discussion of measures of fertility). By contrast, many Developed Countries have TFRs of less than 2, and thus below replacement level: that is, unless there is immigration, within one generation there will be population decline as the number of births is below the number of deaths. That there is this immediately apparent statistical relationship between fertility and development does seem to imply a direct and straightforward causal relationship between them. However, the
relationship between them is far from simple. Alternative, and in some senses competing, explanations of the apparent relationship between fertility and development, the chief of which are rooted in cultural variables associated with marriage and the family will be explored in this chapter.
