Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

Babies and Religions
At the end of my opening lecture in my 1998 course on global health, most
students headed for the coffee machine but one remained behind. I saw her
wander slowly toward the front of the room with tears in her eyes, then, when
she understood that I had noticed her, she stopped, flipped her face away, and
looked out the window. She was obviously moved. I expected her to share
with me a sad personal problem that was going to impede her participation in
the course. Before I could say anything comforting she turned around, gained
control over her emotions, and in a steady voice said something completely
unexpected:
“My family is from Iran. What you just said about the fast improvements in
health and education in Iran was the first positive thing I’ve heard anyone
from Sweden ever say about the Iranian people.”
My student said this to me in perfect Swedish with a clear Stockholm
accent: she had obviously lived in Sweden her whole life. I was stunned. All I
had done was to briefly show UN data for Iran on the increase in life
expectancy and decrease in babies per woman. I had mentioned too that it was
quite an achievement—actually the fastest drop ever, from more than six
babies per woman in 1984 down to fewer than three babies per woman just
15 years later.
It was one of several little-known examples I had shown of fast changes in
middle-income countries in the 1990s.
“That can’t be true,” I said.

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“It is. You said that the fast fall in the number of babies per woman in Iran
is a reflection of improvements in health and education, especially for Iranian
women. You also rightly said that most young Iranians now have modern
values about family size and use contraception. I have never heard anyone in
Sweden say anything even close to that. Even highly educated Swedes seem
completely unaware of the changes that have taken place. The improvements.
The modernity. They think Iran is on the same level as Afghanistan.”
The fastest drop in babies per woman in world history went completely
unreported in the free Western media. Iran—home in the 1990s to the biggest
condom factory in the world, and boasting a compulsory pre-marriage sex
education course for both brides and grooms—has a highly educated
population with excellent access to an advanced public health-care system.
Couples use contraception to achieve small families and have access to
infertility clinics if they struggle to conceive. At least that was the case when I
visited such a clinic in Tehran in 1990, hosted by the enthusiastic Professor
Malek-Afzali, who designed Iran’s family planning miracle.
How many people in the West would guess that women in Iran today
decide to have fewer babies than women in either the United States or
Sweden? Do we Westerners love free speech so much that it makes us blind to
any progress in a country whose regime does not share our love? It is, at least,
clear that a free media is no guarantee that the world’s fastest cultural changes
will be reported.
Almost every religious tradition has rules about sex, so it is easy to
understand why so many people assume that women in some religions give
birth to more children. But the link between religion and the number of babies
per woman is often overstated. There is, though, a strong link between income
and number of babies per woman.
Back in 1960 this didn’t seem so obvious. In 1960, there were 40 countries
where women had fewer than 3.5 babies on average, and they were all
Christian-majority countries, except Japan. It appeared that to have few
babies, you had either to be Christian or Japanese. (A bit more reflection even
at this stage would have suggested some problems with this line of thought: in
many Christian-majority countries, like Mexico and Ethiopia, women also
had big families.)
How does it look today? In the bubble graphs on the next page, I have
divided the world into three groups based on religion: Christian, Muslim, or
other. I have then shown babies per woman and income for each group. As
usual the size of the bubble reflects the size of the population. Look how
Christian populations are spread out on all income levels. Look how the
Christian populations on Level 1 have many more babies. Now look at the

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other two graphs. The pattern is very similar: regardless of religion, women
have more children if they live in extreme poverty on Level 1.
Today, Muslim women have on average 3.1 children. Christian women
have 2.7. There is no major difference between the birth rates of the great
world religions.
In almost every bedroom, across continents, cultures, and religions—in the
United States, Iran, Mexico, Malaysia, Brazil, Italy, China, Indonesia, India,
Colombia, Bangladesh, South Africa, Libya, you name it—couples are
whispering into each other’s ears their dreams for their future happy families.