fertility_economics

Fertility rates and gross national incomes per capita

Mark O. Baerlocher, MD

Toronto, Ont.

Recently the World Health Organization reported 2005 fertility rates per woman and gross national incomes per capita from its 193 member countries.¹ Figure 1 shows these data for the 20 countries with the highest and lowest fertility rates for which gross national income data were available and for the G7 countries (Canada, United States, France, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Japan) for comparison.

Figure 1: Fertility rates per woman and corresponding gross national incomes per capita in 2005 for the 20 countries with the highest and lowest fertility rates for which gross national income data were available and for the G7 countries. Source: World health statistics 2007.¹

Countries with the highest fertility rates per woman tended to have a much lower gross national income per capita than countries with the lowest fertility rates. They also tended to be or to have recently been politically unstable. (The fertility rates per woman for Timor-Leste and Afghanistan were 7.8 and 7.3 respectively but are not included in Figure 1 because data for their gross national income were not available.)

A fertility rate per woman of just over 2.0–2.1 is recognized as being necessary to maintain a country's population size. Countries with a rate below this, which included most of the G7 countries, must rely on immigration if this is their intent.

Ref: 1. World health statistics 2007. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2007. Available: www.who.int/whosis/en/.