> Natutal selection is seemingly going in the opposite direction to were we want it. You have to compare childhood mortality rates. Countries with high rates o

> Natutal selection is seemingly going in the opposite direction to were we want it. You have to compare childhood mortality rates. Countries with high rates of childhood mortality see mothers having more children. The cost of having a child also factors into it, in Western countries each child is really expensive. (30k for birth in the US! And that is just the cost to get started!) Also you are making the implicit assumption that people in poorer countries are having "worse" babies than people in developed countries. Off the top of my head, a few countries that used to be looked down upon by everyone else include England, Germany, Ireland, and the US. Also all of northern Europe, all of SW Asia, and all of East Asia. The fact that China thought the same thing about Europe that Europe thought about China is also a good indicator that "undeveloped" is a rather crude benchmark. Every major study has shown that if you correct for environmental pollution, childhood nutrition, and childhood health care, IQs between regions of the world are all within spitting distance of each other, and human potential falls along a nice bell curve. tl;dr clean up the air, feed the kids, get them to doctors, and everyone thrives. Also stable environments means there be less pressure to have lots of kids, so the population will stabilize than decline.