A Reversal in the Relationship of Human Development With Fertility?

Abstract

Myrskyla et al. (2009) found that the relationship between the human development index (HDI) and the total fertility rate (TFR) reverses from negative (i.e., increases in HDI are associated with decreases in TFR) to positive (i.e., increases in HDI are associated with increases in TFR) at an HDI level of 0.86. In this article, we show that the reversal in the HDI-TFR relationship is robust to neither the UNDP's recent revision in the HDI calculation method nor thedecomposition of the HDI into its education, standard-of-living, and health subindices.