Children Per Woman Screensaver
The Children Per Woman screensaver ranks countries by total fertility rate — the number of children a woman would have over her lifetime at current age-specific rates — from the Demographic and Health Surveys programme. Replacement level is about 2.1. It runs in the browser with nothing to install; press ESC to exit.
How the Children Per Woman screensaver works
The saver reads The DHS Program API, which publishes nationally representative survey results.
No account and no key: the request goes straight from your browser, or from this site's own refreshed copy of the feed where the source does not allow browser access.
Values are drawn on a canvas that resizes with the window, so it works on a laptop or a wall display.
If the source is unreachable the saver says so on screen rather than showing stale numbers as though they were current.
A worked example
Sixteen countries ranked highest first, each with its rate to one decimal place and, in brackets, the year of the survey it came from. The year is not decoration: these are survey estimates with a field date, not a live counter, and a country surveyed in 2015 has almost certainly moved since. Where a country has several rounds, only the most recent is kept.
Settings & tips
- Accent and Background recolour the display without changing the data.
- Add it to a Multi-view grid to watch it alongside other live savers.
- Press ESC at any time to leave fullscreen.
Frequently asked questions
- What is total fertility rate?
- The number of children a woman would bear if she lived through her childbearing years experiencing the age-specific birth rates currently observed. It is a synthetic measure of the present moment, not a prediction about any real cohort.
- Why are these countries mostly African and South Asian?
- Because that is where DHS runs its surveys. The programme focuses on low and middle income countries, so this is not a world ranking — wealthy countries with low fertility are simply not in the dataset.
- Is this real data?
- Yes. It comes from The DHS Program API, which publishes nationally representative survey results. Nothing is invented or simulated, and if the source cannot be reached the saver reports that instead of drawing something plausible.
- Does it cost anything or need an account?
- No. Every screensaver here is free, runs in the browser and needs no sign-up. This one uses a public API that requires no key.