Question

How can fertility rates affect the use of scarce resources?

Answer 1

If a fertile rural woman has one child a year for twelve years and there is only one goat in their pen, some of those dozen (+/-) kids are going to go without milk & cheese. If they grow oranges and a crop fails due to an unexpected freeze (such as what's going on in California right now), the kids will have no fruit on the table and their parents may go broke trying to feed them in general.