The Death of the Fittest

Why are the healthiest and wealthiest populations failing to reproduce?
By Phillip Longman
Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Excerpt:
Yet here is a curious fact we do not dwell upon enough. In today’s world, the best-fed, most prosperous, and seemingly “adapted” people are the least likely to have descendants. This is true even though the comparatively few children of the affluent are generally more likely to survive to adulthood and to be materially advantaged.

As with individuals, so with nations. Indeed, among many of the world’s richest, most industrialized countries, such as Japan and Germany, birthrates have fallen to well below the levels necessarily to prevent ongoing population decline. In the United States, meanwhile, close to one out of five Baby Boomers never had children, and another 17 percent only had one, despite experiencing a higher material standard of living and better health status than any generation in history.

What is going on? It’s strange that Darwin assumed that humans have a natural tendency to overpopulate unless checked by hunger, war, or disease. After all, what today’s demographers call “sub-replacement fertility” is hardly just a phenomenon of modern times. Indeed, it has always been strongly associated with luxury and abundance. the rest