John Singer Sargent, The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (1882)
Children are expensive. It isn’t just that they cost a lot of money (which they do), but even before the concept of money was invented, children were understood to be costly investments. They would eventually become useful—as warriors and wives, hunters and gatherers, farmers and kings and priests and all those other things ancient people became. But from birth until they reach something nearing adulthood, children require food and shelter, an education in some trade or the other, and regular discipline to make sure they learn to abide by the spoken and unspoken rules of society. Children took in the very ancient world as they take now, a lot of work, a lot of attention and, indeed, a lot of love.
Investing in children, therefore, is something of a gamble. If you, dearest reader, are under the age of 18, then ask yourself: How many benefits do I bring to the family? Do I bring in money? Do I plant a garden and harvest turnips for the winter? Will I ever become an economic asset to my family or am I an expense that will never be repaid?
How long will it take before your contributions to the family economy will equal the investments already made in you? In a modern economy, the answer is likely “Never!” No wonder most families in the industrialized and wealthiest of nations intentionally limit their families to one or two kids. Lottery tickets make less risky investments.
But, consider the life of the traditional subsistence farm family, either in the 21st century or in the Middle Ages or at the dawn of the Agricultural Revolution. By planting crops, the traditional farmer is sacrificing something extremely valuable and useful in the present in order to gain a much larger benefit a few months later. By putting seeds into the ground, the farmer loses the chance to transform those grains into bread or porridge (think oatmeal or grits) or beer. Once the seed is planted, the farmer (along with the children and servants) have to keep the ground watered, free from competing weeds, and protected from wandering pigs and cattle. In the course of time, the seeds must be harvested and stored for the winter and spring with enough left over to provide food for the family and enough seed to continue the process for another year. Traditional farm work is constant and hard and filled with risk. Even modern, mechanized farm work is far from easy and never certain.
The more children the subsistence farmer had, the more land could be plowed and planted, and the more food could be produced. For the subsistence farmer, as for the hunter and gatherer, children were still a gamble, but the payoff came quickly—after just a few years—when the kids could start helping with the planting, the weeding and the harvesting, thus increasing the wealth and security of the whole family. Should the farmer grow old and unable to work, those same children (and grandchildren) could repay the investment made in them by supporting the older generation.
Before the middle of the 18th century, almost all farmers were subsistence farmers. Most farmers grew food for their families and hoped, at the end of the year, to have a little left over to exchange for those things that could not be grown on the farm, or for tools, or—that most dreaded of burdens to the subsistence farmer—taxes.
In these pre-modern societies, half of all infants and children died without ever reaching adulthood. Even in 1900, infant mortality rates (Number of infants who die within a year divided by the number of infants born that same year, multiplied by 1000) in the United States hovered between two and three hundred deaths per thousand. Parents who wanted children to support them in their old age might, therefore, hope to have a new child joining the family every couple of years, replacing those who, alas, were unable to survive the diseases and dangers of childhood. Infant and childhood deaths were so common that it was not unusual to give the newest baby to be born the same name as the most recently deceased child. This did not mean that pre-modern people were indifferent to their young children, declining to become overly attached for fear of suffering from a broken heart when the little one died. Parents suffered these losses enormously. It is just that heartache was a constant and accepted part of family life in the pre-modern world.
The Demographic Transition Model
Predictably then, in the pre-modern world, high rates of fertility were balanced with high rates of child and infant mortality. Populations tended to be either stable or grew only slowly. But then, around the middle of the 18th century, things began to change. Simultaneous revolutions in agricultural technology and manufacturing made it possible for farmers to grow more food with less labor than ever before. Manufacturing, which for most of human history had involved a solitary craftsman, assisted perhaps by an apprentice or two, weaving cloth or hammering out horseshoes, became more efficient. Manufacturing became, not a solitary trade carried on at home, but an industry, carried on in factories.
Early manufacturers had no qualms about hiring children to work in their factories and mills, and working class parents (who themselves had been brought up to labor on farms or factories) had even fewer qualms about finding jobs for their young children. Just as children had been working on farms for millennia, children of the Industrial Revolution were also expected to work. The more children one had, the more money they could bring into the family. Life was hard for working people, but if everybody worked, it was manageable.
Then, something entirely unexpected happened. Childhood mortality began to fall in the late 18th century, at least in Europe and America. The population that had been growing slowly since the beginning of the Agricultural Revolution began to increase. Starvation and disease did not go away, but radical inventions like sanitary sewers meant that fewer children died. More girls grew up to become young women and mothers. The population curve swept upward. In the 20th century, innovations in agriculture, sanitation and medicine came to be adopted in much of the rest of the world allowing childhood mortality to fall and growth rates to increase faster and faster.
During the 19th century, the fastest growth appeared to be in the industrializing countries such as Britain, France, Germany, Japan and the United States. Then, after the post-war Baby Boom of the 1940s-1970s, population growth began to level off. Families had fewer children, and women tended to wait longer before having their first child, slowing the growth rate of the population. There are several likely reasons for this, but the strongest reason seems to have been economic. Children had become luxuries, not investments. A child born in 1980, or the year 2000, was unlikely ever to pay back even a fraction of the expense put into it. Parents didn’t expect this of their children—they had social security and retirement incomes to make their retirement years comfortable. Some people even wondered if they wanted children at all. And, with the popularization of safe and effective forms of birth control in the 1960s and 1970s, parenthood became an option, a decision to be taken with care, rather than an inevitability.
This was not true in the un-industrialized world—which included much of Africa and South America. Here, many families continued to work in subsistence agriculture. They continued to have large families as they had in the past. And, even though childhood mortality was still far higher than in the industrialized world, it was much lower than the birthrate. Parents still wanted to make sure that someone would provide for them, so they had kids. Lots of kids.
Most demographers predict that, as the non-industrialized world catches up with the industrialized world, and as child mortality rates fall, parents will begin to have fewer children and population rates will stabilize. In the meantime, population growth is highest in some of the world’s poorest countries and regions.
This story of births and deaths is represented in the Demographic Transition Model.
Stage One in this model represents the vast majority of human history—the Paleolithic Era. Human societies consisted entirely of hunters and gatherers. The majority of children born in this stage of the DTM died in childhood. Parents expected this, and so they had children as early and as often as possible—every two or three years on average. High rates of fertility were matched with high rates of child mortality. The human population in this era was small—no more than a few million scattered over much of the planet—and stable, neither rising nor falling.
Stage Two begins with the onset of agriculture. Since agriculture was not universally practiced, not every society experienced State Two at the same time. Life on the farm, in the village, and in early towns and cities, was safer than was life among the hunters and gatherers. Fertility rates continued to be quite high—a birth every two or three years—but more children survived into adulthood. As a result, populations began to increase. In Europe, this stage lasted into the 20th century. As a result of better health care and better nutrition, almost all children survived into adulthood while fertility continued to be high. Populations grew faster and faster.
In Stage Three, most parents find themselves living in an industrial or post-industrial economy. Children are seen as expensive additions to the family—luxuries almost—rather than economic necessities. Women wait longer to have children and have one or two children on average. Because there are a lot of young women of child bearing age during stage three, the population continues to grow, only not as fast as in Stage Two.
By Stage Four, population increase has begun to level off. Birth rates and death rates once again balance each other out. Populations may fall or remain stable (at a high level). Some demographers believe that, a fifth stage will follow Stage Four. Birth rates will rise somewhat allowing populations to remain stable or to rise slightly.
The demographic transition model does not predict the number of children any one family will have, but it does help us understand and predict the behaviors of large numbers of people. In the 21st century, some cultures continue to encourage large families. Among the world’s most developed countries, however, populations have either stabilized or begun to fall. As the world’s least developed countries begin to industrialize, the DTM suggests that birth rates will fall and populations will stabilize.
One country with a falling population is Russia where, in spite of several years of pro-natalist policies (intended to encourage larger families) an average Russian woman will have 1.8 children over her lifespan. This is below the replacement rate (of 2.1 children per woman). Many countries—including the United States—have fertility rates lower than Russia’s (The US fertility rate is 1.77), but the United States continues to attract immigrants, causing the American population to continue to grow.