Slower population growth also helps to improve education and health levels and the status of women outside the home. Studies from all parts of the world show that children from small families tend to spend more years in school and do better there than those from larger families. In Thailand children from one or two-child families are five and a half times more likely to start lower secondary school than children from families with six or more children. They are six times more likely to go on to upper secondary school. 15 Children from smaller families show lower levels of malnutrition.
Underfed children are more easily distracted and have shorter attention spans.
16 Smaller families bring health benefits, too. When mothers start childbearing below twenty, and have many, closely spaced pregnancies, the health risks to mother and child are high. British demographer John Hobcraft calculates that if mothers below twenty did not bear children, deaths of under-fives could be cut by 17 per cent on average. Spacing all births two to three years apart could have a similar effect. But it's not just a question of cutting child mortality.