CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 782Demographic Trends and Gender PreferencesFamily Dynamics and RelationshipsInsurance, Mortality, Demography, Risk Management

Advances in development reverse fertility declines

Myrskylä, Mikko, Kohler, Hans-Peter, Billari, Francesco C.·2009·Nature
DOI 10.1038/nature08230
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

During the twentieth century, the global population has gone through unprecedented increases in economic and social development that coincided with substantial declines in human fertility and population growth rates. The negative association of fertility with economic and social development has therefore become one of the most solidly established and generally accepted empirical regularities in the social sciences. As a result of this close connection between development and fertility decline, more than half of the global population now lives in regions with below-replacement fertility (less than 2.1 children per woman). In many highly developed countries, the trend towards low fertility has also been deemed irreversible. Rapid population ageing, and in some cases the prospect of significant population decline, have therefore become a central socioeconomic concern and policy challenge. Here we show, using new cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of the total fertility rate and the human development index (HDI), a fundamental change in the well-established negative relationship between fertility and development as the global population entered the twenty-first century. Although development continues to promote fertility decline at low and medium HDI levels, our analyses show that at advanced HDI levels, further development can reverse the declining trend in fertility. The previously negative development-fertility relationship has become J-shaped, with the HDI being positi…

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1038/nature08230

Cites

21 of 21 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Evidence on reversal of fertility decline at high levels of development is mixed, with some studies pointing to reversal and others showing inconsistent patterns.

    “With some evidence pointing to a reversal of fertility decline at high levels of development (Goldstein et al. 2009, Myrskylä et al. 2009, Fox et al. 2019), other work shows more inconsistent patterns (e.g., Myrskylä et al. 2013, Lesthaeghe 2020).”

    From Fertility in High-Income Countries: Trends, Patterns, Determinants, and Consequences (2024) · cites this paper as Myrskylä et al. 2009

  • Declines in fertility tend to reverse as countries become highly developed.

    “Myrskylä, Kohler, and Billari (2009) show that declines in fertility tend to reverse as countries become highly developed”

    From Division of domestic labour and lowest-low fertility in South Korea (2017) · cites this paper as Myrskylä, Kohler, and Billari (2009)

  • Korea is an exception to the reversal: despite achieving high levels of development, it has yet to experience a rebound in fertility rates.

    “however, Korea is one of the exceptions in their study: Despite achieving high levels of development, it has yet to experience a rebound in fertility rates.”

    From Division of domestic labour and lowest-low fertility in South Korea (2017) · cites this paper as Myrskylä, Kohler, and Billari (2009)

  • Gender inequality and the difficulty of combining work and family are plausible explanations for Korea's fertility anomaly.

    “The authors suggest that gender inequality and the difficulty of combining work and family are plausible explanations for this anomaly.”

    From Division of domestic labour and lowest-low fertility in South Korea (2017) · cites this paper as Myrskylä, Kohler, and Billari (2009)

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

2 of the 23 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Myrskylä, M., Kohler, H.-P., & Billari, F. C.
Affiliations
  • University of Pennsylvania (US)
  • Bocconi University (IT)
Corresponding author
Kohler, Hans-Peter
ORCID
Venue
Nature
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2009-08
Volume
460
Issue
7256
Pages
741-743
ISSN
  • 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
  • 1476-4687
DOI
10.1038/nature08230
OpenAlex
W2061303011
Cited by
782
References
23
Citations by year
2026: 30 · 2025: 26 · 2024: 47 · 2023: 28 · 2022: 50 · 2021: 56 · 2020: 105 · 2019: 38 · 2018: 39 · 2017: 33 · 2016: 54 · 2015: 58 · 2014: 37 · 2013: 44 · 2012: 46
FWCI
104.47
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
Locations
  • Nature (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • London School of Economics and Political Science Research Online (London School of Economics and Political Science) (acceptedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • Archivio istituzionale della Ricerca - Bocconi (submittedVersion)
Funders
United Nations Development Programme
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences
  • Social Sciences › Demography › Family Dynamics and Relationships
  • Social Sciences › Demography › Insurance, Mortality, Demography, Risk Management
Keywords
fertility decline, fertility reversal, Human Development Index, economic development, population aging, total fertility rate, below-replacement fertility, population decline, population growth, immigration, demographic transition
MeSH terms
Birth Rate, Cross-Sectional Studies, Education, Female, Fertility, Humans, Income, Life Expectancy, Longitudinal Studies, Male, Maternal Age, Population Growth, Technology, Age Distribution, Developed Countries, Reproductive Behavior, History, 20th Century, History, 21st Century

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review