The total fertllity rate means the number of births per woman during her whole
lifetime, which is how many children she will bear during her whole lifetime. L
ooking at this, you can say that you don't really see a very clear-cut correlat
lon as with the infant mortality rate (see Flgure 4). Laos has a very high rate
in this case, but for other countries there are maybe three or four children p
er mother. And, it is less than two in countries where the clean water utllizat
ion is high. In the long term, the population would decrease In the countrles w
here one woman bears birth to two children or less throughout her lit~etlme. Th
e countries of Thailand and China are a little different from countries listed
on the right. This is because the govemment had been very aggressive in trying
to reduce the birth rate. That Is why the total fertility rate is low. The same
applies somewhat to Indo-nesia, because the government is conducting a very sy
stematic birth reduction policy.
The GDP per capita here is shown in terms of 1000 dollars (see Figure 5). This
ordinate is the infant mortality rate, and you can roughly see that there is th
e negative correlation up to 3000 dollars. That is to say, the infant mortality
rate goes down as the GDP per cap-ita goes up. And although the GDP is low in
Vietnam, China and Indonesia, the infant mortality rate is already low. But rou
ghly speaking, you can say that there is negative corre]atlon between the two e
lements or factors. Other than that, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan wou
ld be out of the graph to the right. And in those countries where the GDP is hi
gh, it doesn't mean that you would have an even lower infant mortallty rate the
more you have of the GDP. Some babies still die due to other causes even after
you reach a certain level of GDP. So you can see a very clear-cut factor of th
e GDP in reducing the mortality rate only up to this critical point.
