Clearly there is much more to birth rates than death rates. El Salvador has a higher life expectancy than Russia, yet twice as high fertility rates. That's ca

Clearly there is much more to birth rates than death rates. El Salvador has a higher life expectancy than Russia, yet twice as high fertility rates. That's case when you compare most Latin American countries to the Eastern European countries. Or we can go back further, to pre-industrial England. The families with the highest incomes (and much lower death rates) had higher fertility rates. Pre-industrial practiced population control to prevent complete demographic disaster (there were strict taboos on extra-marital sex, and young people were limited as to when they could marry by what the community could support). If you actually read the Kevin Myers piece, who as actually been to Ethiopia, you'll see that the Ethiopians do not practice the same kind of control, hence their birth rates are almost twice that of even pre-industrial England.