Factors Affecting Birth Rate
- Government population policy, such as pronatalist or antinatalist policies (for instance, a tax on childlessness
- Availability of family planning services, such as birth control and sex education
- Availability and safety of abortion and the safety of childbirth
- Infant mortality rate: A family may have more children if a country's infant mortality rate is high, since it is likely some of those children will die.
- Existing age-sex structure
- Typical age of marriage
- Social and religious beliefs, especially in relation to contraception and abortion
- Industrialization: In a preindustrial agrarian economy, unskilled (or semiskilled) manual labor was needed for production; children can be viewed as an economic resource in developing countries, since they can earn money. As people require more training, parents tend to have fewer children and invest more resources in each child; the higher the level of technology, the lower the birth rate (the demographic-economic paradox).
- Economic prosperity or economic difficulty: In difficult economic times, couples delay (or decrease) childbearing.
- Poverty levels
- Urbanization
- Pension availability
- Conflict
- Illiteracy and unemployment
Read more about this topic: Birth Rate
Famous quotes containing the words factors, affecting, birth and/or rate:
“The goal of every culture is to decay through over-civilization; the factors of decadence,—luxury, scepticism, weariness and superstition,—are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
“Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)
“Put God in your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer the payment is withholden, the better for you; for compound interest on compound interest is the rate and usage of this exchequer.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)