Fertility rates: the decline is stalling.

• Author: Starke, Linda
• Position: Attaining demographic transitions in population growth

During the 1970s, one of the encouraging developments in population trends was the reduction in the total fertility rate in several key countries, including the world's two largest nations--China and India. (The fertility rate measures the average number of children born to women in their childbearing years.) In China, the rate dropped precipitously, from 6.4 children per woman in 1968 to 2.2 in 1980. In India, the decline was more modest, but still significant: from 5.8 children per woman between 1966 and 1971 to 4.8 children between 1976 and 1981.

These trends helped slow the rate of world population growth from 2.1 percent between 1965 and 1970 to 1.7 percent between 1975 and 1980. At that point, however, the decline in the number of children that women were having in these two population giants stalled.

In China, despite the most aggressive and least democratic population control program in the world, the fertility rate remained around 2.5 throughout much of the 1980s as couples continued to want to marry young and to have two or more children. In India, the overzealous promotion of family planning by the ruling Congress Party through 1977 apparently backfired after the party's defeat, and progress toward lower birth rates ran out of steam.

One important lesson from these experiences is that governments must do more than just supply contraceptives; they need to lower the demand for children by making fundamental changes that improve women's lives and increase their access to and control over money, credit, and other resources.

Many countries still register fertility rates above replacement level, which is generally 2.1 children per woman or basically two children per couple. The total fertility rate for the world as a whole in 1991 was 3.3, ranging from 1.8 in more developed nations to 4.4 in less developed ones (excluding China). In a number of countries, such as Brazil, Egypt, Indonesia, Mexico, and Thailand, fertility rates have been dropping as they did in the 1970s in China and India. At the same time, many developing countries have not yet entered the demographic transition.

POPULATION SIZE, FERTILITY RATE, AND DOUBLING TIME, 20 LARGEST COUNTRIES, 1993 Fertility Rate Doubling Country Population (average number Time (millions) of children (years) per woman) Italy 58 1.3 3466 Germany 81 1.4 * Japan 125 1.5 217 United Kingdom 58 1.8 267 France 58 1.8 169 Russia 149 1.7 990 United States 258 2.0 92 China 1,178 1.9 60 Thailand 57 2.4...