Here is the normal presentation of the US fertility rate:
There are other versions of this chart having a similar presentation.
Why has the fertility rate dropped?
There are many explanations – one is that childhood mortality rate has gone down. Another is the change from an agrarian economy to an urban economy. On the farm, children become a source of labor – in the city, children are usually an expense. From about 1965 to 1972, the simple birth control pill became widely available.
There are other explanations too including a more educated population, whose economic value in terms of work/production is higher, productivity improvements, and many more. Some would also include lifestyle choices today that were not possible in the past.
Here is a normalized version of the chart – this takes in to account the number of children born who survive to reach a child bearing age. In a way, this is a chart of the number of surviving children born per woman. This is known as the “Effective Fertility Rate” (EFR) versus the Total Fertility Rate (TFR), in the first chart. Even after normalization to account for young mortality, the trend remains down over the long term.
The original chart was posted on X by someone as a reply to other comments but it did not cite the data source. However, online searches find similar results from recent estimates.
Next is a chart that tries to do the same for global mortality:
Finally, here is the chart provided by gapminder.org of babies per woman, globally – but does not account for mortality before reaching child-bearing age.
- Some References
- Fertility rate accounting for survival until childbearing age, 2023
- Babies per woman (total fertility rate) | Gapminder
- A New Measure of Surviving Children that Sheds Light on Long-term Trends in Fertility | NBER
