Covid-19 has caused millions of births to be avoided and birth rates have fallen out of bed. Demographers are constantly lowering their population projections and are still vastly overestimating the 2050 population.
Education is just a proxy for access to services like that.
There has to be some kind of underlying reason why humans are going against what we would expect our biology to want, which is to reproduce.
I'm not a traditionalist, pro-marriage, or even religious. The long term cultural effects spanning all cultures show that when both sexes have close to equal rights, birth rates drop.
However, do we tell single men/women who just can't get married to pick up the married peoples slack?
I haven't thought of it this way. I still think lack of poverty is a bigger predictor, but it's interesting the outliers are countries like Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, and Iraq. [0] (babies per woman vs. income level)
[0] https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$state$marker$axis_y$which=...
Educated people with access to modern medicine have low birthrates. New England was well educated from 1650-1800, but the birth rate was still high.
When, the last year?
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location...
An American traveler in rural Sichuan, while on the road, found himself speaking to a local family. A few members of the family were present: A husband and wife, and their youngest child, a daughter.
The couple explained that their house had been torn down as punishment for violating the one child policy. This, evidently, is a real punishment that is used. They said they knew it might happen but intentionally tried to have a child anyway, and were delighted, despite everything, when they learned they were pregnant. That was how badly they wanted a daughter. This was the little girl who was now with them.
The girl was present while they told the story of the demolished house. She heard every word. She had no doubt heard the story before. And she had a striking look on her face.
You might call it pride.