Climate change could alter fertility, with parents in some countries having more children and others having fewer children, a shocking new study claims.
As changing weather patterns wreak havoc on farmlands in tropical countries, parents may want more children to help them deal with the workload.
As a result, these families will also spend less money on education and more time making sure their children acquire agricultural skills.
Meanwhile, in richer countries that are further away from the equator and don't depend on agriculture as much, the opposite is true.
The research team, from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, says this will not only affect the income of those children in the future, but it will also increase the inequality between countries with warmer climates and those with cooler ones.
A new study from Williams College has found that climate change will have a negative effect in warmer countries, leading to children being taught agricultural skills rather than being educated and more children being born to help farm the land (file image)
'Our model suggests climate change may worsen inequalities by reducing fertility and increasing education in richer northern countries, while increasing fertility and reducing education in tropical countries,' said co-author Dr Soheil Shayegh, from Bocconi University in Milan, Italy.
For the study, published in Environmental Research Letters, the team looked at countries near to and further from the equator.
For their economic model, researchers chose two countries: Colombia, to represent a country that relies heavily on agriculture, and Switzerland, a country that is
