POPULATION.

Key factors affecting a country's average birth rate 

• Importance of children as a part of the labor force.

Rates tend to be higher in developing countries (especially in rural areas, where children begin working to help raise crops at an early age).

• Urbanization.

People living in urban areas:usually have better access to family planning services tend to have fewer children than those living in rural areas where children are needed to perform essential tasks.

• Cost of raising and educating children.

Rates tend to be lower in developed countries, where raising children is much more costly because children don't enter the labor force until their late teens or early twenties.

• Educational and employment opportunities for women.

TFRs tend to be low when women have access to education and paid employment outside the home.

In developing countries, women with no education generally have two more children than women with a secondary school education.

• Infant mortality rate.

In areas with low infant mortality rates, people tend to have less children because fewer children die at an early age.

• Average age at marriage (more precisely, the average age at which women have their first child).

Women normally have fewer children when their average age at marriage is 25 or older.

• Availability of private and public pension systems.

Pensions eliminate parent's need to have many children to help support them in old age.

• Availability of legal abortions.

According to the UN and the World Bank, an estimated 26 million legal abortions and 20 million illegal (and often unsafe) abortions are performed worldwide each year among the roughly 190 million pregnancies per year.

• Availability of reliable birth control methods.

Typical effectiveness rates of birth control methods.

• Religious beliefs, traditions and cultural norms.

In some countries, these factors favor large families and strongly oppose abortion and some forms of birth control.