High mortality rates of children tend to provoke high fertility rates among poor communities. In general, the high fertility more than compensates for the high mortality. In one numerical illustration, household whose children have a 75% survival rate choose to have six children, of whom an average of 4.5 survive. The households whose children have a 95% survival rate have two children, of whom an average of 1.9 survive. This pattern helps us to understand the surprising fact that countries with high infant mortality rates have the fastest growing populations in the world (2017).
The reasoning for such a pattern is not yet known, but it is why we such rapid population growth is seen in under developed and third world countries where the infant mortality rates are incredibly high. While high infant mortality rates are predominantly in Western and Sub-Saharan Africa, they run rampant in most third world and underdeveloped countries. The five countries with the highest infant mortality rates are (2017): o Sierra Leone with 154.4 deaths per live