Big Changes

In Europe, in the mid-18^th Century, parents lost between 3 and 4 of their children before the age of 5 (See, OurWorldinData.org/child-mortality). I know only a handful of people who have suffered the awful tragedy of a child not reaching their fifth birthday, yet then (and now in really poor areas) it was commonplace. As a single, summary, measure of progress, a fall in global child mortality from 43% in 1800 to 4.5% in 2015 tells the story of a fundamental shift in the type of life we live on this rock flying through space. Big families were partly a human Buffer against this loss. The global fertility rate is 2.5 children per woman, while in the pre-modern era 4.5 to 7 was common. One brutal way to look at this is that about the same number survive. People as Buffers. The same is true of people as productive assets. As we shift from survival as the goal, we get released from the crudest of incentives. The cruelest of numbers. Have spare children. Earn money to survive. We can build Capital that can provide base security. That can empower us to be the author of our stories.