Replacement fertility is the total fertility rate at which newborn girls would have an average of exactly one daughter over their lifetimes. That is, women have just enough female babies to replace themselves (or, equivalently, adults have just enough total babies to replace themselves).

If there were no mortality in the female population until the end of the childbearing years (generally taken as 44 or 49, though some exceptions exist) then the replacement level of TFR would be very close to 2.0 (actually slightly higher because of the excess of boy over girl births in human populations). The replacement fertility rate is roughly 2.1 births per woman for most industrialized countries (2.075 in the UK for example), but ranges from 2.5 to 3.3 in developing countries because of higher mortality rates.[4] Taken globally, the total fertility rate at replacement is 2.33 children per woman. At this rate, global population growth would trend towards zero.