In demographics it is a funny things that the more affluent a society is, the fewer children they produce. This would seem to be a contradiction. It would seem logical that where people can afford good homes, luxuries and have all the food they want that they would have more children.
However, this is not so and Europe has seen a year on year decline in birth rates since the early 1990s.

The effects of this are many fold. Firstly, the population is getting older. With decent living standards come advantages of health care and people live longer. With fewer births it means less people are supporting an increasing aged population. Governments are finding this hard to balance because they need enough income to pension plans and support schemes to support people when they no longer work.
There is a trend away from government pensions to private plans but even these are failing to produce the amounts of money to enable older people to keep up the life styles they had when they worked.

It also means that there are fewer schools being built and small schools are closing due to falling pupil numbers. The health service is becoming more geared up to serving the needs of an older population but with fewer staff as less young people are in the work force. So, falling birth rates have negative effects.

Howver, on the upside, there should logically be benefits for mankind. In places in the world where child survival rates are low the population tend to produce more children. More mouths to feed means there is an imbalance in the amount of food produced and consumed in wealthier nations than those who are poor.

In an ideal world the distribution of food would mean that those countries who produced more would feed those that produced less but this does not work in practice. There is enough food in the world to feed everyone but it is largely in the hands of consumers in nations with falling child birth rates rather than in those whose birth rates are increasing.

How to address this balance is a political and economical nightmare and efforts, though often made, prove ineffective. The falling birth rates in Europe are not reflected in developing countries and this will also eventually mean that the food and money in the world is in the hands of fewer people.
There is no easy answer to this problem. Contrary to logical ideas, where there is poverty, birth rates are increasing but as Europe becomes more affluent, birth rates are declining.

We need to consider the implications of this and redress the balance but it will be a long time before we make real progress.

Learn more about this author, Sammy Stein.
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