Quote:
Originally Posted by RedDevil
Population growth is strongly correlated to poverty. Once people are rich enough to spoil their kids they quickly learn to control their breeding prowess.
Or maybe it is because once rich they start polluting with a vengeance and have less time on their hands to breed?
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Basically, when you've been elevated to middle class, you either become that one-in-a-million who chances upon the opportunity to start a business and become stinking rich, or you become one of the other 999,999 stuck on the financial treadmill, trying to maintain a middle class lifestyle on thinner and thinner marginal income, with no time or extra income to dedicate to having children.
For many, having children is a sure way to become poorer again (at least for the twenty or so years before you can kick them out of the house so they can find collegiate level employment).
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When you're poor, having more children so you can crowd out the rich isn't some long-term survival strategy. You have more children because: 1.) you've got more time on your hands and less hobbies, 2.) because you don't know better, and 3.) because children, within four or five short years, become useful economic units (whereas children in middle class families take decades to give you a return on investment).