Demographics of the world
According to the CIA - The World Factbook, the country with the highest birth rate currently is Niger at 51.26 births per 1000 people. The country with the lowest birth rate is Japan at 7.64 births per 1000 people. Hong Kong, a Special Administrative Region of China, is at 7.42 births per 1000 people. As compared to the 1950s, birth rate was at 36 births per 1000 in the 1950s, birth rate has declined by 16 births per 1000 people. In July 2011, the U.S. National Institutes of Health announced that the adolescent birth rate continues to decline.
Income and fertility
Income and fertility is the association between monetary gain on one hand, and the tendency to produce offspring on the other. There is generally an inverse correlation between income and fertility within and between nations. The higher the degree of education and GDP per capita of a human population, subpopulation or social stratum, the fewer children are born in any industrialized country. In a 1974 UN population conference in Bucharest, Karan Singh, a former minister of population in India, illustrated this trend by stating "Development is the best contraceptive." Many countries are experiencing a rather weak correlation with income and fertility rate within a given household. Families with a higher income produce a lower number of children resulting in a low fertility rate whereas families with lower income produce more children with a higher fertility rate. Total fertility rate is specifically the number of children who would be born per woman if she were to pass through the childbearing years bearing children according to a current schedule of age-specific fertility rates. In developing or less developed countries, families need their children for labor and for economic support in the future. Many countries do not have proper pension policies, children are needed in order for the parents to have financial support in their old age.