Introduction
Fertility is the measure of how many live-born children an average woman has in her culture. This is reported as birth rate. Fecundity is the number of children a woman is biologically capable of bearing. Fertility numbers are always lower than fecundity due to cultural factors. For example, a breastfeeding woman is temporarily infertile because menstruation stops.
Explanation of Solution
Answer and explanation
Fertility is a way of expressing the birth rate, or how many children an average mother bears. The world birth rate was 19 per 1000 in 2015, but the United States birth rate was 12, and Italy's rate was 8 per 1000, reflecting a downward trend in developed nations. Less developed nations typically have higher birth rates, 40 per 1000 in Niger, for example. Fecundity refers to how many children a woman is capable of bearing over the course of her entire lifetime, from menarche to menopause. Technically, a woman could have a child every year from puberty until the cessation of their fertile years, but most do not for cultural reasons, or because women who are breastfeeding are infertile.
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