Right to Livelihoods in Haiti

11) High fertility and the demand for children: An important consequence of the high labor demands
and need to adapt to crisis seen above is that, despite what many development practitioners and
healthcare workers believe, having many children is economically logical from farmers in the region.
Congruently, they tend to be radically pronatal; they want children, and at 6.0 to 7.1 births per woman
fertility in the rural areas is perhaps the highest rate biologically possible given the prevalence of
infectious diseases, low-calorie diets, high rates of female malnutrition, high female labor demands,
and high rates of male absenteeism. Despite all these limiting factors, fertility in the rural areas is
equivalent to the second-highest country birth rate in the world and almost as high as 19th and early
20th century Hutterites, who had the highest sustained fertility levels ever documented.
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