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Everywhere in the world we can see that there is a clear relation between education/economical condition and fertility rates of a population, with people with less education, usually from minorities or from rural areas having more children. I made a little study about this situation and confirmed, pretty much everyone in every country this happens.
Now, the problem with this, is that it creates a bigger discrepancy in a population and I believe this is one of the biggest problems on our society specially because nowadays we are living more on a "global world". Just to give some examples the assimilation of the romani population is a big problem in many eastern european countries and their population just keep growing and continue not to assimilate. In countries like France, Belgium, and more recently Sweden, where there are more and more areas getting segregated because of lack of assimilation of people that continue to reproduce much more than the natives which will increase the problems. The situation in Turkey, with the Kurds in the eastern area. Big differences in rural and urban population in countries of Latin America that increases this differences and increases the crime.
The obvious conclusion is that if people with low education multiply in bigger numbers, we will have a society with lower education and more social tensions. I think this will be a really big issue in 20/30 years.
What I was wondering was, is there any way to regulate this situation, to have more equality in fertility rates, without increasing the social/economic differences? Is there any country doing this with any success? What can be done to increase the fertility rates of high educated people and decrease the ones from lower educated more effectively so we can have a more equilibrated society?
Everywhere in the world we can see that there is a clear relation between education/economical condition and fertility rates of a population, with people with less education, usually from minorities or from rural areas having more children. I made a little study about this situation and confirmed, pretty much everyone in every country this happens.
Now, the problem with this, is that it creates a bigger discrepancy in a population and I believe this is one of the biggest problems on our society specially because nowadays we are living more on a "global world". Just to give some examples the assimilation of the romani population is a big problem in many eastern european countries and their population just keep growing and continue not to assimilate. In countries like France, Belgium, and more recently Sweden, where there are more and more areas getting segregated because of lack of assimilation of people that continue to reproduce much more than the natives which will increase the problems. The situation in Turkey, with the Kurds in the eastern area. Big differences in rural and urban population in countries of Latin America that increases this differences and increases the crime.
The obvious conclusion is that if people with low education multiply in bigger numbers, we will have a society with lower education and more social tensions. I think this will be a really big issue in 20/30 years.
What I was wondering was, is there any way to regulate this situation, to have more equality in fertility rates, without increasing the social/economic differences? Is there any country doing this with any success? What can be done to increase the fertility rates of high educated people and decrease the ones from lower educated more effectively so we can have a more equilibrated society?
There's not that much you can do to boost fertility rates of educated, wealthy urbanites. Some things that seem to have an effect have to do with lowering the expenses of having children, like subsidized daycare in Quebec. Not having things like flexible work hours for women and conservative ideas about gender roles in marriage that haven't kept up with economic realities seems to be something that's made things worse in Japan as far as fertility goes so one might expect the opposite would help.
At the end of the day, the above aren't the ones that matter. The important thing is empowering the disenfranchised so that they won't be in conditions where they have little choice but to have very large families. Looking at the demographic transition across the world, the most important factors have been:
1. Empowering women legally and giving them education.
2. The entrance of television into a community, specifically television soap operas and sitcoms. This was a huge factor in people aspiring to the kind of lifestyles they saw on television and having fewer children in many developing countries (Brazil, India etc.)
3. Access to birth control and family planning resources. Big difference between rural places in Iran vs. Afghanistan, for instance.
4. Urbanization and agricultural industrialization. Children are needed on a subsistence farm but are more expensive in cities so people have fewer of them.
5. Reliable pensions or old age security. For many of the world's impoverished, having lots of children is the retirement plan. You can afford to have fewer if you know the state will take care of you in old age or you can rely on savings or a pension because of strong rule of law (ie. the state won't collapse and you won't find yourself not getting a pension anymore because you're in rebel controlled territory).
So basically, improving conditions in a community, especially for women, is the best way to control unsustainablly high fertility rates, which ends up breeding even more prosperity because there's more money left over to invest in the children that couples are having. Development breeds more development and your country goes from looking like Zambia to looking like Mexico, where the rural poor are far better off and birthrates are sustainable.
since ancient times cities have always had negative natural growth rates, especially since back in the day cities were a cutlery dish of pestilence, and the only reason they never fell into oblivion was because they would always be flooded with newcomers from fast growing rural area, so this isn't anything new. the only difference is that instead of going from rural to urban it is going from poor country to rich country.
There's not that much you can do to boost fertility rates of educated, wealthy urbanites. Some things that seem to have an effect have to do with lowering the expenses of having children, like subsidized daycare in Quebec. Not having things like flexible work hours for women and conservative ideas about gender roles in marriage that haven't kept up with economic realities seems to be something that's made things worse in Japan as far as fertility goes so one might expect the opposite would help.
At the end of the day, the above aren't the ones that matter. The important thing is empowering the disenfranchised so that they won't be in conditions where they have little choice but to have very large families. Looking at the demographic transition across the world, the most important factors have been:
1. Empowering women legally and giving them education.
2. The entrance of television into a community, specifically television soap operas and sitcoms. This was a huge factor in people aspiring to the kind of lifestyles they saw on television and having fewer children in many developing countries (Brazil, India etc.)
3. Access to birth control and family planning resources. Big difference between rural places in Iran vs. Afghanistan, for instance.
4. Urbanization and agricultural industrialization. Children are needed on a subsistence farm but are more expensive in cities so people have fewer of them.
5. Reliable pensions or old age security. For many of the world's impoverished, having lots of children is the retirement plan. You can afford to have fewer if you know the state will take care of you in old age or you can rely on savings or a pension because of strong rule of law (ie. the state won't collapse and you won't find yourself not getting a pension anymore because you're in rebel controlled territory).
So basically, improving conditions in a community, especially for women, is the best way to control unsustainablly high fertility rates, which ends up breeding even more prosperity because there's more money left over to invest in the children that couples are having. Development breeds more development and your country goes from looking like Zambia to looking like Mexico, where the rural poor are far better off and birthrates are sustainable.
I agree with you but without doubt some countries are doing a better job by a margin in relation to others. There is a small difference in the fertility rates of places like Mexico or Argentina between urban/rural but much bigger in Colombia for example. About immigration some countries are doing much better than others, for example, Italy or the US (look how successfull the Middle East, Indian even the Chinese communities are in comparision to places in Europe like France or the Nordic countries).
The Japan case you mentioned it´s an interesting one because it could be the first country (if not the only) to invert this tendency. Japanese people are working so hard nowadays that they literally don´t have the time to raise kids. But I expect them to get recompensated for all the hardwork they are having in 10/15 years, when automatization starts to establish, more people in Japan will have finally the time to live their lives and they will probably afford to have it, even if they get unemployed, because they are generating the wealth now to be recompensated later and since they have a society where everyone contributes (few "parasites") with all these they may finally increase their families and invert this tendency, but it is a particular case. Apart of Japan, maybe Germany could do it but with all of these refugee issue I´m not really expecting that to happen so easily.
Quote:
Originally Posted by grega94
since ancient times cities have always had negative natural growth rates, especially since back in the day cities were a cutlery dish of pestilence, and the only reason they never fell into oblivion was because they would always be flooded with newcomers from fast growing rural area, so this isn't anything new. the only difference is that instead of going from rural to urban it is going from poor country to rich country.
I think there is a big difference in assimilation between rural to urban vs developing country to developed and a lot of people don´t take that in consideration nowadays. Rural people when they move to a urban area the main thing that they have to focuse is to get educated because apart from it it´s pretty much okay if it is the same culture.
When people are from other country, other culture, the picture is different specially for 2nd/3rd generation because they probably still feel different and when they get exposed to relative poverty in my opinion they feel more frustrated because they were already born there (can´t compare with how bad things were in place of origin and don´t understand how "lucky" they are) and question to themselves why they are poorer than the natives. Most of this people don´t deal with this well, you don´t have this problem in rural to urban transition at least not on the same scale at all. Take in consideration in this case i´m talking more specifically about the situation in Europe. In the US, I think there were a lot of people that imigrated but were already high-educated. They are having more this kind of problem with the recent immigration from Mexico (probably rural Mexico?) and other places on Central America.
Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
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A lot of brain development is environmental and you can dramatically improve outcomes with better parenting and raising children in a better educational environment. My family that stayed in the poorest parts of Kentucky have children who mostly grow up to be non working drug addicts. My family that moved to better places have children who are affluent and successful. We have the same genetics.
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