Chapter 2: Population Ecology and Human Demography

FERTILITY

ANGELA ROSE DELUTA BSED 3 –

ENGLISH
FERTILITY
- It is the quality of a human’s ability to
produce offspring, which is dependent on
age, health, and other factors.
- The noun can also refer to the state of a
plant or animal’s being capable of
reproduction.
- The Latin root word is fertilis, “bearing
in abundance or fruitful,” from ferre, “to
bear.”
● One demographic statistic of fertility is the
crude birth rate, which is the number of births
in a year per thousand people.
● It is referred to as “crude” because it is not
adjusted for important population
characteristics such as the number of women of
reproductive age.
Another statistic
01 is total fertility rate (TFR), which is
the number of children born to each woman in a
population, over the woman’s lifespan.
The forces that determine a region’s or country’s TFR are
generally the same, including healthcare, education,
economic conditions, culture, and religion.
03
These factors all work together to determine a
01 desired fertility (the number of
country’s
children the average couple says they want to
have).

Factors that increase people’s desire to have

children are known as pronatalist pressures.
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Other factors that result in high TFR include:
- poverty; need for children to work on farms, tend to
household chores and care for parents as they age;
- lack of access to contraception for women due to inability
to afford birth control, cultural taboos against its use,
- pressures from patriarchal societies that view children as
a sign of male fertility.

Poverty is strongly correlated with high TFR, as poorer

societies tend to show higher population growth rates than
do wealthier societies.
Three main factors have been credited for
a decrease in the fertility rate:
• fewer deaths in childhood, greater access
to contraception,
• more women are getting an education
and;
• seeking to establish their careers before
and sometimes instead of—having a
family.
The global fertility rate was 2.4 children
per woman in 2019.
This rate is approximately half of what it
was in 1950 (4.7).

The global average fertility rate is

around 2.3 children per woman today.
Cell Functions
 Top 10 Countries with the Highest
Fertility Rates (by births per woman) –
World Bank 2021 (2019 data)
1. Niger – 6.8
2. Somalia – 6.0
3. Congo (Dem. Rep.) – 5.8 (tie)
4. Mali – 5.8 (tie)
5. Chad – 5.6
6. Angola – 5.4
7. Burundi – 5.3 (tie)
8. Nigeria – 5.3 (tie)
9. Gambia – 5.2
10.Burkina Faso – 5.1
Top 10 Countries with the Lowest Fertility Rates
(by births per woman) – World Bank 2021 (2019
data)
1. South Korea – 0.9
2. Puerto Rico (U.S. territory) – 1.0
3. Hong Kong (China SAR) – 1.1 (tie)
4. Malta – 1.1 (tie)
5. Singapore – 1.1 (tie)
6. Macau (China SAR) – 1.2 (tie)
7. Ukraine – 1.2 (tie)
8. Spain – 1.2 (tie)
9. Bosnia and Herzegovina – 1.3 (tie)
10.San Marino – 1.3 (tie)
• The goal is to achieve zero population growth,
when the population size is neither increasing nor
decreasing. This occurs when the number of people
born (birth rate) equals the number of people dying
(death rate).
• Zero population growth is realized when the
population reaches the replacement fertility rate,
meaning that every couple only has enough
children to replace themselves.
REFERENCES

● https://worldpopulationreview.com/country
-rankings/total-fertility-rate

● https://alg.manifoldapp.org/read/introducti
on-to-environmental-science/section/bec39
252-39e0-4185-9f72-56f262eb954c#fertilit
y