By: Ella Abril
Fertility has been a topic of concern since historic times, and modern times are no different. Today, modern science has given the world explanations for fertility’s rise and fall. We have learned, for example, that fertility is affected by positive and negative advancements within a society, such as urbanization and industrialization. Physiological factors such as stress and nutrition have also been found to lead to depleted fertility, changing the body’s focus and primary function. Finally, toxins within the environment also severly affect fertility, altering the way the body responds to situations and produces hormones needed for successful reproduction. As such, it can be said that aspects such as technological achievements, physiological conditions, and environmental toxins each change fertility within a person and society to a great extent.
As a population leans toward urbanization and overall industrialization, fertility levels within that society are affected. In some cases, societies experience an expansion in fertility rates (Martine et al., 2013). Along with industrialization and urbanization typically comes access to better health services and resources. This means that a country or society’s urbanization and overall improvement of the quality of life of its citizens generally leads to more babies being born to live healthy, long lives. Urbanization also brings along an increase of wealth and income levels, allowing families within the community to better provide for their children. On the other hand, scenarios have occurred that show populations can also withstand a decrease in reproductive capabilities when also experiencing industrialization (Martine et al., 2013). Populations that are considered “developed” experience a decline in overall mortality rates—a decrease that causes a lessened need for an abundance of children as they survive at an increasing rate. With the rise in a population’s urbanization also comes a rise in the cost of children. Childcare rates and hospital bills become exponentially larger as a country becomes more developed, a fact that leads most families to choose to have less children to divide the cost between. Altogether, a country can have a decreased or increased fertility due to urbanization depending on the circumstances surrounding its rise. Different populations can have entirely different experiences.
When the body is faced with extreme stress or experiences poor nutrition, it is left with a decreased reproductive system (Negro-Vilar, 1993). In situations such as these, the body focuses its energy on keeping the most important body systems—such as the cardiac system, the respiratory system, and the muscular system—working properly. The reproductive system, meanwhile, is overlooked by the body and is neglected. As a result, the body experiences a decrease in reproductive function and fertility. This decrease causes disparities in fertility, leading to a person losing their ability to reproduce readily.
Within the environment, toxins are present that have the ability to severely affect fertility. These toxins—heavy metals, pesticides, and other endocrine disruptering agents—harm hormone distributions within the body and damage the quality of the gametes that our reproductive systems carry (Jain et al., 2025). The change caused by these toxins lead to changes in overall fertility and reproduction. Along with severely damaging reproductive systems, these toxins also affect individuals throughout their entire lifespans and exposure to them is widespread. Needless to say, toxins have a detrimental effect on the entire world’s fertility.
When considering reasons that a population’s fertility is at a certain level, there are several uncontrollable factors within their environment that can either hinder or catalyze their reproductive success. The most known factors to have an effect on fertility are the transformation of a lagging country into a developed one, the lack of proper nutrition leading to increased stress levels, and the toxins within the land. Though these effects do not take every situation into account, they include the broad majority and ring true in most scenarios. In the end, the aforementioned factors have a great effect on fertility and should be taken into consideration when making determinations on why a population’s reproductive success has occurred.
References
Barban, N., De Cao, E., & Francesconi, M. (2021). Gene-Environment Effects on Female Fertility. IZA - Institute of Labor Economics. http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep63369
Jain, M., Carlson, K., & Singh, M. (2025, January 19). Environmental toxins and infertility. StatPearls [Internet]. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK576379/
Martine, G., Alves, J. E., & Cavenaghi, S. (2013). Urbanization and fertility decline: Cashing in on structural change. International Institute for Environment and Development.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep01293
Negro-Vilar, A. (1993). Stress and Other Environmental Factors Affecting Fertility in Men and Women: Overview. Environmental Health Perspectives, 101, 59–64. https://doi.org/10.2307/3431377
06/23/2025