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> Humans are self-regulating: fertility rates drop as resources become scarce (e.g. people are less likely to have children when struggling to meet basic needs)
by tsimionescu 2y ago
> Humans are self-regulating: fertility rates drop as resources become scarce (e.g. people are less likely to have children when struggling to meet basic needs)
The exact opposite is what we are observing: people in poorer parts of the world, and poor people in richer parts of the world have way more children than people who have all their basic needs met and then some.
The best known predictor of average number of children is infant mortality rate: without fail, as infant mortality decreases, average number of children per family decreases as well.
- olalonde 2y agoI didn't claim the relationship was linear. People in poorer countries still have relatively abundant food by historical standards and aren't at risk of starvation. However, when food availability drops below a certain threshold, reproduction rates tend to decrease - this is basic ecology. Historically, the most populated regions were also resource-rich, like the fertile river valleys. But we're now living in an era of abundance where even the poorer regions have access to plenty of food.