• woodrow wilson center
  • ecsp

New Security Beat

Subscribe:
  • rss
  • mail-to
  • Who We Are
  • Topics
    • Population
    • Environment
    • Security
    • Health
    • Development
  • Columns
    • China Environment Forum
    • Choke Point
    • Dot-Mom
    • Navigating the Poles
    • New Security Broadcast
    • Reading Radar
  • Multimedia
    • Water Stories (Podcast Series)
    • Backdraft (Podcast Series)
    • Tracking the Energy Titans (Interactive)
  • Films
    • Water, Conflict, and Peacebuilding (Animated Short)
    • Paving the Way (Ethiopia)
    • Broken Landscape (India)
    • Scaling the Mountain (Nepal)
    • Healthy People, Healthy Environment (Tanzania)
  • Publications
  • Events
  • Contact Us

NewSecurityBeat

The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
  • The Economist

    In Poor Countries, Is Lower Fertility Bad for Equality?

    August 23, 2012 By Wilson Center Staff

    The original version of this article appeared on The Economist.

    Economies benefit when people start having smaller families. As fertility falls, the share of working-age adults in the population creeps up, laying the foundation for the so-called “demographic dividend.” With fewer children, parents invest more in each child’s education, increasing human capital. People tend to save more for their retirement, so more money is available for investment. And women take paid jobs, boosting the size of the workforce. All this is good for economic growth and household income. A recent National Bureau of Economic Research study estimated that a decrease of Nigeria’s fertility rate by one child per woman would boost GDP per head by 13 percent over 20 years. But not every consequence of lower fertility is peachy. A new study by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health identifies another and surprising effect: higher inequality in the short term.

    Countries with very high fertility are usually dirt-poor – peasants value extra hands, however small, to help in the fields. (In Niger, which has a GDP per person of $700, the average woman can expect to bear more than seven children.) Low-fertility countries (with significant exceptions, such as China) tend to be rich. The Harvard study confirms that this pattern is replicated within countries: as a rule, the poor tend to have larger families. The authors use Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), which contain a lot of detail about family structure and household assets. DHS data from 60 developing countries enable them to divide households into five income groups and to show that in every continent, the “youth-dependency ratio” (the number of children under 15 compared with the working-age population) is lowest in the richest group, next lowest in the next-richest group and so on. The poorest group has the highest youth-dependency ratio. The gap between top and bottom is marked. Ratios in the richest households are a third below those in the poorest ones.

    Continue reading on The Economist.

    Sources: Harvard Initiative for Global Health, National Bureau of Economic Research.

    Chart Credit: Data from the UN Population Division, arranged by Schuyler Null.

    Topics: Africa, demography, development, economics, Nigeria, population, poverty, youth
    • tchopko

      The real factor of importance is time. The potential inequality earned by poor nations with low fertility must be analyzed on a temporal scale or from a temporal perspective. Generally, if a poor nation can host a lower fertility rate to grow economically and become developed, inequality will diminish in most cases due to a rise in average income.

Join the Conversation

  • RSS
  • subscribe
  • facebook
  • G+
  • twitter
  • iTunes
  • podomatic
  • youtube
Tweets by NewSecurityBeat

Trending Stories

  • unfccclogo1
  • Pop at COP: Population and Family Planning at the UN Climate Negotiations

Featured Media

Backdraft Podcast

play Backdraft
Podcasts

More »

What You're Saying

  • farmers are planting sweet potato seeds in the fields in Hebei Province, China Microplastics in Soil – Small Size Big Impact on U.S. and Chinese Agriculture
    ♥️MAGACat♥️ We Ultra Win!!!: Biden needs to give us all new washing machines. And masks for the washing machines. "changing the...
  • women_caregivers The Burden of Care: The Impact of Progressive Policies
    ♥️MAGACat♥️ We Ultra Win!!!: The woman on the left looks very Ukrainian. Are we taking care of her too? 5/19/2022
  • Pakistan-fertility-estimate Pakistan’s Population Bomb Defused?
    muhammad rehman: High infant mortality , low life span and immigration should also be taken into account. A TFR of...

Related Stories

No related stories.

  • woodrow
  • ecsp
  • RSS Feed
  • YouTube
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Home
  • Who We Are
  • Publications
  • Events
  • Wilson Center
  • Contact Us
  • Print Friendly Page

© Copyright 2007-2022. Environmental Change and Security Program.

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. All rights reserved.

Developed by Vico Rock Media

Environmental Change and Security Program

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center

  • One Woodrow Wilson Plaza
  • 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
  • Washington, DC 20004-3027

T 202-691-4000