Sub-replacement fertility

[1][needs update] This can be "translated" as 2 children per woman to replace the parents, plus a "third of a child" to make up for the higher probability of males born and mortality prior to the end of a person's fertile life.

This includes most nations of Europe, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Russia, Iran, Tunisia, China, India, the United States and many others.

In 2016, all European Union countries had a sub-replacement fertility rate, ranging from a low of 1.3 in Portugal, Poland, Greece, Spain and Cyprus to a high of 2.0 in France.

[4] The countries or areas that have the lowest fertility are in developed parts of East and Southeast Asia: Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea.

[6] The fact that more people are going to colleges and universities, and are working to obtain more post-graduate degrees there, along with the soaring costs of education, have contributed greatly to postponing marriage in many cases, and bearing children at all, or fewer numbers of children, and the fact that the number of women getting higher education has increased has contributed to fewer of them getting married younger, if at all.

[11] People are more likely in modern society to invest strongly in the needs of their children, such as offering them the best education, shelter (a room only for the child), travel, cultural activities etc.

Cities tend to have higher property prices, making a large family more expensive, especially in those societies where each child is now expected to have their own bedroom, rather than sharing with siblings as was the case until recently.

In such countries child labour is quite common, with children bringing money home, or directly supporting the family through physical work.

By contrast, in high-income nations, child labour is almost universally banned, and it is the parents who are expected to invest extensively into their children.

In this regard, there are major differences between European countries: while 50.23% of women aged 15–39 state that the "ideal" family has 3 or more children in Estonia, and 46.43% say this in Finland; only 11.3% say this in Czech Republic, and 11.39% in Bulgaria.

[22] The availability of assisted reproductive technology (ART) may foster delay of childbearing, because many couples think that it can solve any future fertility problems.

The inverse relationship between income and fertility has been termed a demographic-economic "paradox" by the notion that greater means would enable the production of more offspring as suggested by the influential Thomas Malthus.

In some cultures for instance, the payment of the bride price creates an obligation on the wife to have children, and failure to do so often results in threats and violence.

[24] Total fertility rate (TFR) is affected by a phenomenon called the tempo effect, which describes "distortions due to changes in the timing of births.

"[25] John Bongaarts and Griffith Feeney have suggested that this tempo effect is driving the decline of measured fertility rate in the developed world.

The strong emphasis on the domestic role of women in Germany (unlike Scandinavia and France) was described as the cause of the very low fertility in that country.

[34][35][36] The Greek historian Polybius largely blamed the decline of the Hellenistic world on low fertility rates,[37] writing in his work The Histories that: In our time all Greece was visited by a dearth of children and generally a decay of population, owing to which the cities were denuded of inhabitants, and a failure of productiveness resulted, though there were no long-continued wars or serious pestilences among us.... For this evil grew upon us rapidly, and without attracting attention, by our men becoming perverted to a passion for show and money and the pleasures of an idle life, and accordingly either not marrying at all, or, if they did marry, refusing to rear the children that were born, or at most one or two out of a great number, for the sake of leaving them well off or bringing them up in extravagant luxury.

We give our allies a share in the government that our numbers may increase; yet you, Romans of the original stock, including Quintii, Valerii, Iulii, are eager that your families and names at once shall perish with you.

The fertility rate also increased to around 2.0 in France and 1.9 in Britain and some other northern European countries, but the role of population policies in these trends is debated.

hope, with the help of government incentives and large-scale change towards family-friendly policies, to stall the population decline and reverse it by around 2030, expecting that most of Europe will have a slight natural increase by then.

This has been raised as a political issue in France, Germany, and the United States where many people have advocated policy changes to encourage higher birth and immigration rates.

[citation needed] Analysing data for 40 countries, Lee et al. show that typically fertility well above replacement and population growth would be most beneficial for government budgets.

Fertility near replacement and population stability, however, would be most beneficial for standards of living when the analysis includes the effects of age structure on families as well as governments.

Fertility moderately below replacement and population decline would maximize standards of living when the cost of providing capital for a growing labour force is taken into account.

[59] For twenty years, the total fertility rate in the United States remained relatively stable compared to much of the world.