The Relationship between Fertility Rate and Economic Growth in Developing Countries

Abstract: The relationship between fertility rate and economic growth is an important subject. This thesis sums up the current research status and use in regression and correlation data analysis, which consists of 120 developing countries in total from 1970 to 2014. On the one hand, total fertility rate has a negative effect on economic growth in the current period. When human capital is scarce, returns of investment on human capital will be lower than investment in offspring. As a result, in a society with limited quantity of human capital, people tend to choose higher fertility rate and invest little in each child. On the other hand, economic growth appears at the beginning of the high fertility rate; with the acceleration of economic growth, the fertility rate declines. Human capital investment had an increased effect of scale returns in declining fertility of economic development; if human capital is higher, investing in human capital will get higher returns; this encourages more investment in human capital and less on having offspring and along with faster economic growth.