Why Wealthier Countries Tend to Have Lower Birthrates

Wealthier countries around the world consistently show much lower birthrates (fertility rates) compared to poorer countries. This inverse relationship between prosperity and childbearing is so common that demographers refer to it as the "demographic-economic paradox." In general, as national income and education levels rise, the average number of children born per woman falls. For example, Japan's per capita GDP is high and its fertility rate is only about 1.2 children per woman, whereas Ethiopia's per capita GDP is much lower and its fertility rate is around 6.1. As one Indian minister put it at a 1974 UN conference, "Development is the best contraceptive." In other words, economic and social development naturally leads to smaller families.

(File:Total Fertility Rate Map by Country.svg - Wikipedia) Figure: Global map of total fertility rates by country (2024). The wealthiest regions - North America, Europe, East Asia, and Australia (shown in blue tones) - have low birthrates (often below 2 children per woman), whereas poorer regions like most of Africa (brown tones) have high birthrates (above 4). This illustrates the broad inverse correlation between national income and fertility rates.

The trend of lower birthrates in wealthier societies has deep historical roots and continues in recent patterns across all regions. Below, we analyze the long-term historical transition that led to today's low fertility in developed nations, and then break down the key factors - economic, sociological, cultural, and biological - that explain why affluence often brings fewer babies. We also examine notable exceptions to the rule and why they occur, considering perspectives from around the globe.

Historical Trends: The Demographic Transition

Over the past two centuries, countries have gone through a remarkable demographic transition as they develop. Historically, in pre-industrial societies, both birthrates and death rates were very high (families had many children, but many died young), resulting in slow population growth. With modernization, death rates fall first - improvements in nutrition, sanitation, and medicine save lives, especially reducing infant and child mortality. Birthrates initially remain high in this stage, causing a burst of population growth. Later, birthrates begin to decline as society adapts to the new conditions (Demographic transition: Why is rapid population growth a temporary phenomenon? - Our World in Data).

Several forces drive this fertility decline in the transition from a poor agrarian society to a wealthy industrial one:

Lower Child Mortality: When most children survive to adulthood (thanks to better health), parents no longer need to have many offspring to ensure a few survive. Historically, as child mortality dropped, parents adjusted by having fewer children. For example, once couples realized that nearly all their children would live, they chose to limit family size.
Economic Changes: Industrialization and urbanization change the value of children. In agrarian economies, children are assets - they contribute labor on farms and care for parents in old age. In industrial urban economies, children become costlier to raise and less economically useful to the household. This reduces the incentive for large families as countries get richer.
Women's Empowerment: As development progresses, women gain education and opportunities outside the home. With more women in school and the workforce, marriage and childbearing are often delayed, and families end up smaller on average. When women have more say in their lives and access to careers, they tend to choose fewer children.

This pattern - high births dropping to low births as societies become wealthier and more urban - has repeated across all regions in the last 150 years. Europe and North America underwent this transition in the 19th and 20th centuries, and Latin America and Asia saw dramatic fertility declines in the late 20th century even before becoming fully rich. For instance, in Bangladesh, the total fertility rate fell from about 6.9 in 1970 to 2.0 in 2019 - an extraordinary drop achieved through better child survival, family planning access, urbanization, and women's education, despite Bangladesh still being a lower-income country. Virtually every society that has achieved a degree of development has eventually seen birthrates fall. This has occurred largely independent of culture or religion, following the universal pattern of mortality decline followed by fertility decline. Today, low birthrates are the norm in most highly developed nations, and many are at or below the replacement level of ~2.1 children per woman needed to keep a population stable.

With that historical context, we can explore why wealth and development lead to lower birthrates. The causes are multi-faceted, spanning economics, social changes, cultural shifts, and even biological factors. Below is a comprehensive breakdown of these explanations.

Economic Factors (Cost and Benefits of Children)

One major reason richer countries have lower birthrates is that the economics of childbearing change with development. In wealthy societies, raising children is no longer an economic necessity for families - in fact, it becomes an economic cost. Key economic factors include:

Cost of Raising Children: In developed countries, children are expensive to raise, requiring many years of education, healthcare, housing, and material support. Rather than contributing labor, a child in a modern city is an economic dependent for a long time. As incomes rise, parents often choose to invest more resources in each child's "quality" - such as better education and extracurriculars - rather than have a larger quantity of children. This "quality over quantity" trade-off means affluent parents frequently stop at one or two children so they can give them the best opportunities. Children can even be seen as financial "drains" on the household budget in rich countries, due to the high costs of schooling, childcare, housing, and general upbringing. These costs discourage large families.
Opportunity Cost of Parents' Time: People with higher income or education face a greater opportunity cost when they take time away from careers to raise children. For both men and women - but especially for women - having a child can mean interrupting one's career, losing promotions or earnings, or foregoing other opportunities. In wealthy countries where wages are high, this lost income and career growth can be substantial. Thus, professionals may limit their family size in order to maintain their careers.
Female Economic Independence: In developed economies, women can usually work and earn independently, reducing the economic "need" to marry early or have children for financial security. Women who can support themselves have less incentive to become or stay married solely for economic reasons, and they may choose to have fewer or no children. Societies with dual-income households also often delay or limit children, because coordinating careers and family life can be challenging and costly (for example, paying for childcare while both parents work).
Old-Age Security and Pensions: In poor agrarian societies, parents rely on having many children as a form of old-age security. In wealthy nations, however, there are usually pension systems and social safety nets. The elderly get financial support from government or investments, not just from their kids. This removes a big incentive for having a large number of children.
Urbanization and Housing Costs: Wealthier countries are highly urbanized. In cities, living space is limited and housing is expensive, making large families more difficult. Many urban dwellers live in apartments or small houses not suited for many kids. It is costlier and less practical to raise many children in a modern city environment.

Together, these economic factors mean that in affluent societies children are no longer an economic asset - they are an investment and a consumer good that parents must financially support. As a result, many couples in wealthy countries calculate that they "can't afford" more than one or two children, given the lifestyle they desire. This economic calculus strongly contributes to lower birthrates with rising wealth.

Sociological Factors (Education, Gender Roles, and Lifestyle)

Beyond pure economics, a range of social changes that come with development lead to smaller families. These sociological factors involve how people choose to live, work, and form families in modern affluent societies:

Education and Career (Especially for Women): One of the most consistent predictors of lower fertility is female education. As girls and young women attain higher education levels, they tend to marry later and have fewer children. In wealthier countries, a much larger proportion of women complete secondary and tertiary education, which often means entering childbearing years later. Educated women also have greater knowledge of family planning and more autonomy in reproductive decisions. The rise in women's labor force participation is closely tied to lower birthrates. When most women are pursuing careers, it's common to postpone having children until the late 20s or 30s, which naturally limits the number of children possible.
Delayed Marriage and Childbearing: Wealthier countries have seen a clear trend toward marrying later or not at all, and likewise delaying first births. In low-income traditional societies, marriage and parenthood often occur soon after puberty. In affluent societies, young adults often spend their 20s focusing on education, career, or personal goals. The average age of first marriage and first childbirth has risen significantly in the developed world. This delay means a shorter reproductive window and fewer years in which a couple can have children, resulting in lower total fertility.
Urban Lifestyles and Individualism: Social life in wealthy nations often emphasizes individual fulfillment and personal freedom. In contrast to more traditional societies where family and child-rearing are central to one's identity, modern urban culture offers many alternative life paths. Young adults in high-income countries may prioritize experiences like travel, hobbies, career advancement, or relationships before settling down. The freedom to live independently can lead many to remain childfree or with just one child. Additionally, urban social networks can normalize smaller families.
Changing Family Structure: Development often accompanies a shift from extended family living to nuclear families or even solo living. In poorer rural settings, extended families sharing a household can help with child-rearing. In rich societies, households are typically just the parents and children, or single parents, with limited help. The rise of dual-income couples also makes large families difficult to manage without outside support.
Access to Family Planning: As societies modernize, access to contraception and reproductive health services improves, which is a social and public health factor enabling people to choose smaller families. In developed countries, birth control is readily available and widely used, making it easier to prevent unplanned pregnancies. This is a crucial difference from poor countries, where even if a couple wanted to limit births, they might lack the means to do so. The availability of contraception is often cited as a key reason fertility falls with development. For example, in developing countries that experienced fertility decline, increased contraceptive use was a major factor (Bangladesh's contraceptive prevalence rose from ~8% in the 1970s to ~60% by the 2000s, facilitating its drop in births CASE 13: Reducing fertility in Bangladesh).

In summary, education, urbanization, and evolving social roles reshape family life in wealthy countries. Women's empowerment and career focus, later marriage, smaller household units, and access to birth control collectively create a social environment where low fertility is the norm.

Cultural Factors (Values and Norms About Family)

Culture plays an important role in fertility decisions, and affluent societies often undergo cultural changes that favor lower birthrates. Some key cultural and attitudinal factors are:

Changing Values and Priorities: As countries become richer and more educated, there is frequently a move toward more secular, individualistic values. Traditional cultural imperatives like "have as many children as possible" or religious injunctions to "be fruitful and multiply" tend to weaken. Instead, personal fulfillment, career achievement, and material comfort gain prominence as life goals. Having children is seen as one of many possible paths in life, not an obligatory one.
Norms About Ideal Family Size: Culture strongly influences what people consider the "ideal" number of children. In high-fertility cultures, it's common to aspire to four or five children. In low-fertility cultures, the ideal may be one or two, and having a very large family can be seen as unusual. Over time, developed societies have adjusted to seeing small families as normal. There is also less social pressure to have a child at all - being single or childless is widely accepted.
Role of Religion and Secularization: Many poorer societies with high birthrates have cultures that strongly encourage childbearing. In contrast, many wealthier societies have undergone secularization, which often correlates with lower fertility. That said, in a rich country, more religious subgroups can have higher fertility. Overall, as a nation modernizes, religious adherence tends to diminish, contributing to smaller family norms.
"Second Demographic Transition" - Lifestyle Choices: Demographers sometimes describe a second demographic transition in ultra-wealthy societies, characterized by post-materialist lifestyle choices. This can include higher rates of cohabitation, having children outside of marriage, and prioritizing gender equality. These cultural shifts can lead to delayed or reduced childbearing.
Diffusion of Ideas: Cultural exchange and media spread low-fertility norms. Today, even lower-income regions are exposed to images of small Western families on TV and social media. This can accelerate the cultural change toward lower desired fertility even before a country becomes rich.

It is important to note that cultural factors can also explain exceptions. Some wealthy communities maintain higher birthrates due to strong pronatalist values or religious teachings. Overall, though, the broad cultural trajectory of development is toward fewer children, as people in wealthy societies redefine what a "good life" entails.

Biological and Health Factors

While economic, social, and cultural explanations account for much of the decline in birthrates, there are also biological and health-related factors tied to wealth and modernization:

Improved Child Survival and Biology of Reproduction: In high-mortality environments, humans evolved to have many offspring. In low-mortality modern environments, parents do not need to overshoot by having extra kids, since almost all survive. Longer healthy lives and low infant mortality are hallmarks of wealthy nations, biologically supporting the decision to have fewer children.
Later Maternal Age and Fecundity: Wealthier societies encourage later childbearing, but human fertility is age-limited, especially for women. By postponing first births into the 30s, many women simply cannot have as many children. Biologically, fertility declines with age, raising infertility rates and lowering total births.
Widespread Contraception and Safe Abortion: Modern contraceptives and access to abortion directly control the biological outcome of pregnancy. In wealthy countries, most sexually active couples can separate sex from childbearing, which drastically reduces unintended pregnancies.
Health and Lifestyle Influences on Fertility: Modern life may biologically reduce fertility in some cases. Rising rates of obesity, pollutants, stress, and other factors can subtly affect fertility. While not the primary driver, these influences may contribute.
Mortality-Fertility Link: In poor countries, high maternal mortality can reduce birthrates directly by removing women from the reproductive pool. In wealthy countries, minimal maternal deaths mean the capacity to have children is high, but people choose fewer births anyway.

In short, wealth changes both the biological risks of childbearing and the social context around it. Modern medicine and technology give rich societies the option to control reproduction, and late childbearing limits total births.

Global Patterns and Regional Perspectives

The trend of lower birthrates with greater wealth is observable across all regions, but each region has its own nuances:

Europe: Europe's developed countries are famous for very low fertility rates, often well below replacement. Southern and Eastern Europe have some of the lowest (around 1.2-1.5). Northern and Western Europe sit a bit higher (1.6-1.9) but still below replacement. Generous parental leave and financial incentives can nudge fertility up slightly, but not above replacement.
North America: The United States and Canada are wealthy with low fertility. The US total fertility rate hovered near replacement for longer than other advanced countries but recently declined to around 1.6-1.7. Cultural and religious differences, as well as immigration, helped keep the US fertility rate slightly higher in the past, though it is now firmly in low-fertility territory.
East Asia: Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and others have some of the lowest fertility rates in the world (~0.8-1.3). High cost of living, late marriage, intense work culture, and persistent traditional gender roles that conflict with modern expectations all contribute to ultra-low fertility.
Latin America: Many countries in Latin America saw rapid fertility declines from ~6 children per woman to near 2.0 or below, thanks to effective family planning, urbanization, and education. These declines happened even before these countries became fully wealthy.
Middle East and North Africa: Fertility has fallen significantly in countries like Iran, Turkey, and North African nations. Oil-rich Gulf states, though very wealthy, only recently came down toward replacement and sometimes remain above what might be expected for their income, largely due to cultural and policy factors. Israel is a notable high-fertility outlier among rich nations, at around 3.0.
South Asia: Countries like Bangladesh and India have dramatically reduced birthrates through education, family planning, and urbanization. Others, like Pakistan and Afghanistan, still have relatively high fertility, reflecting slower social and economic change.
Sub-Saharan Africa: Africa has the highest birthrates today. Most countries remain low-income and have not yet completed the demographic transition. Still, fertility is falling in some regions, and as African economies develop, birthrates are expected to decline further.

Notable Exceptions and Outliers

While the inverse correlation between wealth and birthrates is strong, some wealthy places maintain higher fertility, and some poorer places manage lower fertility:

Israel: An OECD member with a fertility rate around 3, driven by strong cultural and religious values, substantial social support for families, and a long tradition of pronatalist sentiment.
Oil-Rich Gulf States: Places like Qatar and Saudi Arabia historically had high birthrates that have come down but can remain above replacement among citizens, influenced by tradition, religion, and government benefits.
High-Fertility Poor Countries: Many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa still have rates of 4-6, lacking the development and social transitions needed to lower fertility.
Low-Fertility Poor Countries: Bangladesh, Iran, Cuba, and others managed to bring fertility down rapidly through highly effective family planning and social interventions, despite lower incomes.
Subcultures Within Wealthy Countries: Religious communities like the Amish in the US or Haredi Jews in Israel have higher fertility than their broader society, underscoring the power of cultural values.
"Fertility J-Curve" at Very High Development: Some ultra-developed countries (Sweden, Denmark, France) have seen a small rebound from extremely low levels, suggesting family-friendly policies and gender equality can stabilize or slightly raise fertility, though not to replacement levels.

Conclusion

Wealthier countries tend to have lower birthrates due to a complex interplay of long-term historical processes and contemporary factors. Over generations, as societies become more prosperous, they transition from "many births, many deaths" to "few births, few deaths." Economic conditions change the cost-benefit equation of childbearing, social life and gender roles evolve, cultural norms shift toward smaller families, and modern health technologies make it possible to control fertility. All these factors collaborate to reduce birthrates as wealth rises.

Yet fertility is not determined by income alone. Culture and policy can override or accelerate typical patterns, creating outliers like Israel among wealthy nations or low-fertility Bangladesh among poorer ones. Still, the general global trend is unmistakable: once child mortality drops, women are empowered through education, and economic development takes root, fertility almost always declines. This phenomenon has enormous implications for demographic aging in rich countries and for population growth in developing regions. Ultimately, the story of wealth and birthrates is one of human adaptation: as life becomes more secure and opportunities expand, families increasingly opt for fewer children, investing deeply in each child's well-being rather than relying on sheer numbers of offspring.

Sources

Karan Singh quote and education’s effect on fertility (original reference: Income and fertility - Wikipedia)
Wikipedia: Income and fertility – causes of low fertility in developed countries (opportunity cost, female independence, quality vs quantity)
Nargund (2009) – Factors in declining birth rates (child cost, contraception access, female education, urbanization, lifestyle choices)
Our World in Data – Demographic Transition model (reduced child mortality, structural economic change, and women’s empowerment leading to lower fertility)
Lam (2021) in PNAS – Rapid fertility declines in Asia/Latin America; example of Bangladesh’s drop and contributing factors (child mortality decline, family planning, urbanization, women’s education)
Population Reference Bureau – U.S. fertility decline (delayed marriage/childbearing, rising women’s education/work)
Institute for Family Studies – Historic and cultural influences on fertility (cultural norms drove fertility decline in Europe; modern Africa’s fertility lower at given income due to global cultural exposure)
Public Discourse – “Israel’s Exceptional Fertility” (Israel ~3 births per woman, unique among OECD, due to cultural and religious factors)
Taub Center report – High fertility among Israeli secular and traditional populations (not just religious)
Gulf Migration Study – Qatar’s fertility ~3.2 for Qatari women (2014–2015) despite high national income