Re:The heritability of fertility makes world population stab...
by masklinn on Friday July 05, 2019 @05:27AM
(#20361076)
> Large families simply happen due to poverty. When poor, you want more children because there's strength in numbers. Plus the women are staying home and can afford to have children.
Poverty and risk, fertility changes lag behind medical advances / availability e.g. in europe the large families were mostly around the first half of the 20th century (to soon after WWII), where culturally you wanted to have a fair number of children so you'd have some living to adult age (and also manpower on the farm) but medicine had also progressed and spread enough that almost all of them would survive to adult age.
Culture quickly caught up and the default assumption that all children will live to adult age means even farming families aren't really large anymore (not to mention machines & automation makes the manpower of many children less relevant).
Developed countries are mostly at the point where medical advances are getting available, leading to huge families because the cultural aspect hasn't caught up yet.
Poverty and risk, fertility changes lag behind medical advances / availability e.g. in europe the large families were mostly around the first half of the 20th century (to soon after WWII), where culturally you wanted to have a fair number of children so you'd have some living to adult age (and also manpower on the farm) but medicine had also progressed and spread enough that almost all of them would survive to adult age.
Culture quickly caught up and the default assumption that all children will live to adult age means even farming families aren't really large anymore (not to mention machines & automation makes the manpower of many children less relevant).
Developed countries are mostly at the point where medical advances are getting available, leading to huge families because the cultural aspect hasn't caught up yet.