Fertility and poverty in developing countries
Birdsall, N.M.; Griffin, C.C.
Journal of Policy Modeling 10(1): 29-55
1988
ISSN/ISBN: 0161-8938 Document Number: 275495
High fertility strains budgets of poor families, reducing available resources to feed, educate, and provide health care to children. Conversely, many characteristics of poverty contribute to high fertility—high infant mortality, lack of education for women, too little family income to "invest" in children, inequitable shares in national income, and inaccessibility of family planning. Experience in China, Indonesia, Taiwan, Colombia, Korea, Sri Lanka, Cuba, and Costa Rica shows, however, that fertility can fall rapidly in low-income groups and countries when health care, education, and family planning services are made wisely available. It appears that adequate delivery and targeting of these services—services that most governments already play a major role in providing to their citizens—are a key to breaking the nexus between poverty and high fertility, and reducing the negative effects of both on the lives and prospects of children.