Fertility Plummeting

Image by Ferdinand Reus via Flickr

This week we focus on some astonishing figures that will probably do more to improve lives in developing countries than anything else going on now. Fertility rates are plummeting. Developing countries are making in 20 years a demographic transition—from five children per mother to two—that took more than a century in developed countries. It is the consequence of greater prosperity, and also the cause of it, as falling numbers of dependents allow workers to get richer.