What is the average children per family

Still, the differences between religions within the same country are much smaller than the differences between different countries in different socio-economic conditions.

We can see how much more living conditions matter than the religion. And then there have been some small highly religious sub-populations in which religious teaching had a very substantial effect on fertility rates. The highest total fertility rate that I found for any population in human history was for the Hutterites — a group of Christians with origins in Tyrol — where, in the early twentieth century, married Hutterite women in North America had on average Family planning refers to all active efforts to choose the number of children a woman or family wants.

While the changes discussed before changed the incentives for having a larger or smaller number of children, family planning is focussed on the decision making and implementation of that decision on the personal level. Why family planning is highly important today is to consider the share of pregnancies that are unwanted.

The number of pregnancies that are unintended is very high. For the year — the last year for which we have data — it is estimated 47 that 85 million pregnancies were unwanted. These are 40 percent of all million pregnancies in that year. Of these 85 million pregnancies 50 percent ended in abortion, 13 percent ended in miscarriage, and 38 percent resulted in an unplanned birth.

This means that 32 million children are born unplanned every year. A second way of looking at this is to study the discrepancy between the wanted fertility rate and the actual fertility rate:.

Access to family planning and safe and confidential access to modern methods of contraception can reduce the number of unintended births.

But a goal of lower fertility is irrelevant if there are no means to achieve it. Methods of contraception give parents the chance to get the actual fertility closer to their desired fertility.

This map shows where women have access to these methods. Better education of women matters again as research shows that better education can increase the understanding and acceptance of contraceptive methods and the ability to use contraception effectively. Martha Bailey 51 studied the timing of legal access to birth control across US states and finds that the availability of the Pill substantially accelerated the post decline in marital fertility. Based on her analysis Bailey argues 40 percent — or even more — of the total change in the marital fertility rate in the decade between and can be attributed to the availability of the Pill.

And again, this driver of lower fertility rates is complementing other factors discussed above that contributed to lower fertility rates. Goldin and Katz argue that the availability of modern contraceptive methods contributed to the increased opportunities of women. With the development of low-cost, safe methods of contraception have become more widely available in recent decades.

But as the map shows there is still a substantial unmet need for contraception in many parts of the world. In this chart we see the relationship between fertility rates and the use of contraception. This is shown as the average children per woman versus contraception prevalence based on the use of any method of contraception. Here we see a negative relationship: in countries where contraception use is low, the number of children per woman is higher. As contraception becomes more widely used, the number of children per woman declines.

We can also see this when we compare the unmet need for contraception with fertility rates : the average children per woman is high where the unmet need for contraception is also high. This effect persisted for at least two decades and additional positive effects on the health and nutritional status of the children. Family planning advice surely can work as the impressive case of Iran shows, in Iran had a fertility rate of 6.

But was the policy necessary to drive down fertility? But is it really? The chart shows fertility in China since The striking decline and rebound of fertility around is due to the Great Leap Forward famine. But otherwise fertility in China was over 5 and even as high as 7 children per woman in the s and 60s.

Then, fertility started to decline — and as we see from the chart this decline started in , long before the introduction of the one-child-policy. China promoted family planning policy in the s and 70s, but the one-child policy was phased in between and By the time of the introduction of the one-child-policy, fertility in China had already more than halved.

The huge reduction in fertility happened irrespective of the one-child-policy. Also shown in the chart is the evolution of fertility in Taiwan. Taiwan — which is claimed by China as part of China — never introduced a one-child-policy. Yet, Taiwan experienced the same decline that China did. From around 7 children per woman to fewer than two. Today the fertility in Taiwan is even lower than in China. In fact the fertility is close to 1 child per woman — just the aim that China had and never reached despite this being the planned outcome of the Chinese government.

We have already seen that as a country develops — child mortality declines and incomes grow — the fertility declines rapidly. This visualization shows their finding. But at very high levels of development—HDI over 0.

While causality cannot be established in this relationship, it is evident that after a given point, higher development is associated with increasing fertility.

Not only do the authors show this relationship cross-sectionally, but also over time: after reaching the lowest Total Fertility Rate at HDI values between 0.

It is a finding with important consequences. For an interactive version of this visualization, see here. The total fertility rate TFR Civil registration systems register vital events — births, deaths, fetal deaths, marriages and divorces — for governments. As such they are a key source for vital statistics and fertility measures.

As the following map shows the civil registration coverage of births is incomplete in many countries in Africa and Asia. A second aspect about country level data of fertility to keep in mind is that there can be considerable heterogeneity within countries, which are hidden in the mean fertility which were discussed in this entry.

The mean Total Fertility Rate for India in was 2. At some universities you can access the online version of the books where data tables can be downloaded as ePDFs and Excel files.

The online access is here. For a comparison of the latest available data of different data sets, see Wikipedia here. All our charts on Fertility Rate Annual number of births by world region Average number of children vs child mortality Average number of children vs child mortality, by the religion of the majority of the population Birth Rate: The number of births per 1, people in the population Birth rate Children born per woman Children per woman UN; to Children per woman Children per woman Children per woman by GDP per capita Children per woman vs.

GDP per capita Children per woman vs. Human Development Index Children per women vs. Child Mortality in countries with and without strict family planning policy Maternal mortality ratio vs. Fertility rate Share of married women whose need for family planning is satisfied with modern methods Share of women using modern contraceptive methods The total fertility rate by world region including the UN projections Total fertility rate UN Total fertility rate, including UN projections UN to Unmet need for contraception among married women of reproductive age Women's educational attainment vs.

Empirical View. Why has the global fertility rate fallen so rapidly? Click to open interactive version. Country by country: The decline of the number of children per woman since World population by level of fertility over time, Fertility rates can decline extremely fast.

How long did it take for fertility to fall from 6 children per woman to fewer than 3 children per woman? Countries that have low fertility rates today had very high fertility rates in the past. Total Fertility Rate around the world over recent centuries. Births Globally. Birth Rates Around the World. What explains the change in the number of children women have? The choice for having a child is a question of opportunity costs and education changes them Much of the theoretical work in recent decades on how families decide how many children they want rests on the models of the economist Gary Becker.

Additional positive feedbacks of education. Positive feedback via the health of children There is evidence, which we discuss in our entry on child mortality , that better education of mothers is having a positive impact on better health and lower mortality of the children. Positive feedback via contraceptives Education is also important for the knowledge and use of contraceptives and the ability of better educated women to reduce the gap between the desired and the actual number of children is an additional positive feedback effect by which better education reduces the number of children.

Positive feedback via lower fertility The shortest loop of positive feedback runs through fertility itself. Better education makes it possible for social norms to change In both historical and contemporary episodes of declining fertility researchers have found strong evidence that social norms are important in reducing the number of children that parents desire — I will present some of this evidence below.

Empirical findings. Higher child mortality causes higher fertility rates. Replacement is the response to the experience of a child death while hoarding is the response to the expectation of child mortality. This thinking becomes understandable when one considers that in pre-modern societies more than one third of all children die before they are five years old.

Declining child labor reduced fertility rates. More education for children made having children more expensive. Lower child mortality increases the incentives to invest more resources into children. Lower child mortality increases the incentives to invest more resources into each child and with limited resources parents therefore chose to have fewer children Technological and structural change increased the importance of education Falling mortality of children is of course not the only reason why children in societies with better living conditions are better educated.

Greater care for children. Children providing for their parents at an old age. Role models and media. A number of researchers looked at the effect of new media becoming available: Television is not only providing entertainment, it also exposes the viewers to very different ways of life. They are often in urban settings and feature female characters with higher education that work outside the household and who have smaller families The researchers La Ferrara, Chong, and Duryea 37 studied the impact of television on the fertility rate in Brazil.

Social norms originating in France. Family planning involves the use of contraception as well as counseling by experts. A second way of looking at this is to study the discrepancy between the wanted fertility rate and the actual fertility rate: This visualization shows the two measures country by country. This visualization shows the two measures over time. Joshi and Schultz 53 analyze the impact of a family planning program that was implemented in Matlab, Bangladesh in Did the one-child-policy work?

Fertility in China and Taiwan The relationship between fertility and HDI through time , , The number of births in a population is measured in different period and cohort measures:. Period Measures. The total fertility rate TFR 57 — or simply Fertility Rate — is defined as the average number of children that would be born to a woman over her lifetime if: The woman were to experience the exact current age-specific fertility rates ASFRs through her lifetime, and The woman were to survive from birth through the end of her reproductive life.

It is expressed as children per woman. Cohort Measures. Incomplete civil registration. Within-country differences. Total fertility rate map: average births per woman by districts, Data Sources. United Nations World Population Prospects. Geographical coverage: The entire world — countries and world regions. Time span: From onwards. Available at: Online here The League of Nations records are available via Northwestern University and these records include population figures, birth rates, and death rates.

They are available by world region and country a global total is missing however. Data: The data is detailed and includes Data fertility rates by age ASFR , cohort and period and mean ages at childbearing. Geographical coverage: More than 70 countries Time span : Mostly the 2nd half of the 20th century although data for the 1st half of the century is available for some countries Available at: Human Fertility Database and Human Fertility data website.

Data: Birth rates Geographical coverage: Various countries around the world Time span : From onwards Available at: Published in three volumes covering more than pages. These statistics — originally published under the editorial leadership of Brian Mitchell since — are a collection of data sets taken from many primary sources, including both official national and international abstracts dating back to Data: The total fertility rate Geographical coverage: Data is available for a great number of countries.

Time span : Data goes back to Available at: The data documentation and the spreadsheets available for download can be found here. The documentation includes a discussion of the quality of the available Data fertility. Data: Total fertility rate and on the crude birth rate Geographical coverage: Entire world, by country and world region Time span: Data is available only for the last decades.

Available at: Data for total fertility rate is here , and data for crude birth rate is here. Data: Fertility and related data. Geographical coverage: More than 90 countries — here is the list of countries. Get the Insider App. Click here to learn more. A leading-edge research firm focused on digital transformation.

Frank Olito. Family size varies from state to state. Most families have one or two children, but Utah has the most kids per family and New Hampshire has the lowest. Sign up for Sidekick to get the best recs for smarter living. Sparsely populated countries average profile. South Asia average profile. Hot countries average profile. American Samoa. French Guiana. OPEC countries average profile. West Bank. Former British colonies average profile.

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