What affects fertility

Changing populations and

places

3. Fertility

Syllabus link

Population change and demographic transition over time, including

• natural increase

• fertility rate

• life expectancy

• population structure

• dependency ratios

Term Recap

Crude Birth RateTotal number of births in a single year per 1000 of the population.

General Fertility RateThe number of live berths per 1,000 women aged 15–49 in one year.

Total Fertility RateThe average number of children born to a woman in her lifetime.

Fertility Key Points

• Fertility is still high in most of the least developed countries and although it is expected to decline, it will remain higher than the rest of the world.

• In the rest of the developing countries, fertility has declined markedly since the late 1960’s and is expected to reach below replacement level by 2050 in the majority of these countries.

• Below replacement fertility prevails in the developed regions and is expected to continue to 2050.

Fertility Key Points

• Replacement level fertility is the level of fertility at which a population exactly replaces itself from generation to generation.

• In developed countries, replacement level fertility can be taken as an average of 2.1 per woman.

• In countries with high infant mortality rates, however, the average number of births may need to be much higher.

What factors affect fertility rates?