Illiberal societies like Russia, Iran, and China also have low birth rates, and falling. The correlation is with economic development and education, which supp

Illiberal societies like Russia, Iran, and China also have low birth rates, and falling. The correlation is with economic development and education, which suppresses birth rates across all cultures and systems of governance. The only places in the world with very high birth rates are poor with high levels of illiteracy. As they develop their birth rates are starting to fall too. It’s funny… I remember the overpopulation panic. If we’d kept reproducing like that we may well be facing a “Soylent Green” future, but it didn’t happen. Instead of celebrating the fact that humans seem able to self regulate our birth rates to avoid Malthusian catastrophes we are now panicking about that instead.