Talk:Birth rate

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Phanai08. Peer reviewers: Mjjabai.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 15:50, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Early edits
I removed the statement that "a very small birth rate can result in the extinction of a people". While that is true, it is also intuitively obvious and adds no value to the definition as it is highly unlikely in modern times. Populations ebb and flow, and with established national boundaries and international respect of diversity one can expect that population extinction due to low birth rates is now highly unlikely as migration will an almost always does diminish that effect completely. Especially as land becomes more valuable and densities increase and medicine improves, it is highly unlikely that a human population will ever become extinct due to low birth rates.

On the other hand, I added that low birth rates can often result in bunkrupting an economy. This is a new phenomena (as low birth rates are a relatively new phenomena) - but can be observed in the United States where it is assumed that the social security system will be bankrupt by 2025 due to a lack of population growth. As that occurs it may be anticipated that migration will be allowed to increase dramatically in order to offset that problem. IP 68.34.65.100. 24 March 2004‎

I believe that the equation shown currently (rate = n/1000) is either inaccurate, or needs a better explanation. The equation as stated doesn't take into account the population at all. I believe that according to the article, the equation should be be rate = (n/p)*1000, which puts 1000 in the numerator, and has another variable p for population in the denominator. I believe this because if there were no deaths, it should look like exponential growth dP/dt = true_rate * population making true_rate have units of births per person per year, and because basing on an aproximate known birth rate for the united states of 14.3, .0143 births per year per person sounds reasonible. 14,300 births per year would translate to .000524 births per year per person which is totally unreasonible. That's a birth per woman per 1000 years. I would change it myself, but I don't actually know anything about political science, and I don't know how to edit equations.

Different metric
Possibly related to the comments above, some recent reading on birthrates lists them in the form of average births per woman in her lifetime, which seems like a more intuitive and useful way of putting it. There isn't any easy way to convert between the two since the equation here is an annual stat rather than a lifetime per capita average. --Bk0 (Talk) 12:13, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Influencing Factors
I think, it would improve the article to clearly describe the (positive or negative) relationship of the influencing factors. That leaves less room for doubt. Some of the factors aren't fully intuitive.

Axxn 14:29, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Diggar vilalge(Pop:700) in the Nubra Valley (Ladakh, India) had a birth rate of 1.79 births per 1000 people for the 1998-2002 period. I think this is the lowest recorded TBR anywhere with a minimum population of 500. 

Animals other than humans
Animals other than humans also have birth rates. The article should be modified and expanded to include them. -- Kjkolb 00:43, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Crude Birth Rate
I know that there is such a thing as Crude Birth Rate, but I'm not sure if it's the same thing as regular Birth Rate, or if there is a difference. Could someone edit it for me? 11:14, 10 November 2007

So, I changed the First "sentence" because it didn't make any sense. Unfortunately I'm by no means an expert in this subject and someone should really look it over. 207.112.51.182 19:47, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Influencing the birth rate
The birth rate is becoming an item of concern in more and more countries. I would like to add some text mentioning this, and using Italy and Malaysia as examples of countries where the government wants to increase the birth rate (with reference to policies supporting new mothers), and China as an example of one that wants to decrease it (with reference to its One Child Policy). I would also add a link to the Optimum Population Trust for background on the issues involved. Ellingh (talk) 11:54, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Misleading images
The images hints at the possibility of a negative birth rate. Is this at all possible? hell yes it is of course i dont care tho —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.164.193.141 (talk) 22:27, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

what is birth rate?
A birth rate is a rate of birth. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.49.110.115 (talk) 23:03, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Clean up
The article needs an overhaul. information is not easily accessed. Top section long and rambling —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.254.147.52 (talk) 16:18, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I have done some editing and Wikifying, but was unable to find citations for the global birth rate of previous years; only fertility rates.--Soulparadox 10:31, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Editing and Reorganization
Changed the wording farther down the article when the word "fertility" is confused for "pregnancy." In addition, reorganized the introduction to be more of a...well...introduction. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lewisgold (talk • contribs) 00:02, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

United States
hello i googled "us birth rate" and went straight for wikipedia, but i thought the 'United States' was more argumentative than informative or analytical. although i am really not an expert on the subject (the reason i was looking for facts and analysis) i would be glad to help document sorry for the poor english - A researcher — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.90.16.176 (talk) 21:14, 8 June 2015 (UTC)


 * The article makes a very big leap saying correlated variables control one another, that paper shouldn't have made that conclusion without specific research in the first place. Regardless it's not the place to argue for policy change in the US. 12.161.66.6 (talk) 00:51, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

External links modified
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Orphaned references in Birth rate
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Birth rate's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Nenkan": From Aging of Japan:  From Demography of Japan:  

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External links modified
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External links modified
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Incorrect RNI in introduction
The intro currently says "The average global birth rate was 18.5 births per 1,000 total population in 2016.[9] The death rate was 7.8 per 1,000. The RNI was thus 1.6 percent."

Simple subtraction tells me the RNI was 1.07 percent, not 1.6 percent. Am I missing something? Rdgboulder (talk) 20:10, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Absolute Structural Problems associated with Population Growth
Discussion of the burden placed on service provision makes no reference to the particular organization of the economy - Capitalism, for example, provides as little support as politically possible - so as to maximize private profit. In an economy organised on humanist principals rather than private profit - human welfare would (likely) be supported out of social surplus before anything else. The choice of language, too, indicates the assumptions behind this article. The only burden here is on private profit - which is directly at odds with social welfare. Further, an economy which provides education, contraception and economic freedom would likely enjoy an easier relationship with population compared to one which starves education and health services and compels people with threat of poverty. Pretty basic stuff. Or, did I miss the memo and this has to be politically sanitized and bland? I'd argue this is quite important to a balanced discussion of population. No? Andy.Welch.nz (talk) 08:32, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Birth rate decrease
Due to which reason has birth rate not decrease? 2409:4041:6E18:1059:40C9:3FFF:FE04:3733 (talk) 09:38, 17 January 2022 (UTC)