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A Few Worbs ON GLOBAL OVERPOPULATION 167
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Figure 1. Natural growth / decrease as a function of the fertility rate.
Source of data: Our World in Data.
The fertility rate is the outcome of complex social processes, making it hard to
pick one central factor. It can be presumed that the more developed a country is
(not only in GDP, but also in HDI), the lower its fertility rate (Caldwell —
Schindlmayr 2010). The inverse correlation between fertility and welfare applies
within societies as well. Declining fertility is a typical concomitant of social
modernization, but it is very hard to verify whether it is a precondition or a
consequence. It is certain that apart from welfare, several factors are to be considered
for the fine-tuning of the index, first of all the position of women within a given
society (McClamroch 1996; Weinberger 1987). This may expose a peculiar
U-shaped pattern: in societies with gender inequality in which the horizon of
female life paths is narrow, fertility is regularly very high. Among developed
countries, those with greater gender equality, for example the Scandinavian
countries (Hoem 2005), perform better than those with somewhat less equality
(Central and Southern European countries).
Similar values can be found for natural growth on a somewhat shifted scale:
the highest values are around 3-4%, the lowest around 1%. Today, natural decrease
affects some 40 smaller or larger countries, the great majority in Central, Eastern
and South-eastern Europe. Among the most populous countries in the world,
China is experiencing only slight decline with a fertility rate of 1.164. With its
fertility rate of 2.03, India has a natural growth of 7 per 1000 in the United States,
this number is barely over 1 per 1000.
In addition to fertility, mortality also influences population change. The most
important data concern infant and childhood mortality, which may directly
influence a society’s reproductive potential. The mortality rate (annual deaths per
1000 persons, rarely given in percentage) depends on how youngish or oldish the
age composition of the population is, and of course, what characterizes the peoples
state of health. As a result, among countries with high mortality rates one can find
both low-income populations of a fairly young age and developed but aging
societies. The lowest mortality rates are, consequently, in the oil kingdoms of the