This is a great idea, but obviously flawed. By simply squaring the total fertility index, countries that produce a lot more than two children per woman get a very high BMI. But they also have a high dependency rate due to that, so they would actually be doing better with a lower total fertility rate.

So a better formula would rank countries of equal wealth with a fertility rate of 2.1 the highest, and countries deviating from that while having the same wealth lower, no matter in which direction they deviate.

This is pure gold and I can’t wait for more people to take it seriously

Economy = Money × Children²

MrCrabs.jpg

Human beings, in the aggregate, usually have more kids when things are stressful or dangerous in their environment. And, indeed, the results that fall out of applying this calculation look a lot like that to me.