It's an important question whether or not these countries can grow their agriculture (which implies infrastructure and institutions as well) at an exponential r

It's an important question whether or not these countries can grow their agriculture (which implies infrastructure and institutions as well) at an exponential rate. If they can't, then Malthus was right. If they can, Malthus was wrong. Seeing as sub-Saharan African countries are struggling to feed the billion people they have already, no they can't handle another billion. We're talking about the poorest people on the planet here. Somehow we're so caught up in being PC that we can't tell people it's a bad idea to have so many kids for numerous reasons. > there is a very high correlation between "birth rate" and "infant mortality rate", so as you reduce the infant mortality rate, the number of children per woman reduces drastically. No. Correlation does not imply causation. A third factor is that infant mortality rates drop as modes of living change. It's apparently urbanization that causes people to choose to stop having so many children.