Declining birth rate in Developed Countries: A radical policy re-think is required

There is a concern about declining birth rates in both the developing and developed world (www.rand.org). Fertility rates tend to be higher in poorly resourced countries but due to high maternal and perinatal mortality, there is a reduction in birth rates. in developing countries children are needed as a labour force and to provide care for their parents in old age. in these countries, fertility rates are higher due to the lack of access to contraceptives and generally lower levels of female education. The social structure, religious beliefs, economic prosperity and urbanisation within each country are likely to affect birth rates as well as abortion rates, developed countries tend to have a lower fertility rate due to lifestyle choices associated with economic affluence where mortality rates are low, birth control is easily accessible and children often can become an economic drain caused by housing, education cost and other cost involved in bringing up children. Higher education and professional careers often mean that women have children late in life. This can result in a demographic economic paradox. The Total Fertility rate (TFr) of a population is the average number of children that would be born to a woman over her lifetime if she were to experience the exact current age specific fertility rates through her life time and she were to survive from birth through the end of her reproductive life. it is obtained by summing the single year age specific rates for a given time point. Perhaps more relevant to the current debate is the replacement fertility rate which is the total fertility rate in which women would have only enough children to replace themselves and their partners. Effectively it is the total fertility rate at which newborn girls would have an average of exactly 1 daughter over their lifetimes. by definition replacement is only considered to have occurred when the offspring reach 15 years of age. The replacement fertility rate is roughly 2.1 live births per woman for most industrialised countries. due to increased mortality rates, the approximate average for developing regions of the world is 2.3. at this rate, population growth through reproduction will be approximately 0, but still be affected by male-female ratios and mortality rates The fertility of the population of the united States is below replacement among those native born, and above replacement among immigrant families and the socially deprived (Singh et al., 2001). However …