speaking of Fertility Rates, the UK one seems to hover at just below 2 children per woman these days, which is slightly beneath the necessary if you intend to sustain the level of current population (ignoring for that matter other kinds of population growth). If you lower that rate significantly, you might lower the population and make it theoretically easier to feed them, but you will soon end up in demographical problems - more old than young means an increased burden on the young to sustain the old - which in the natural order of things they ought to do. To solve this, Germany with its round about 2 decades of Fertility Rates of 1.4 had to a) significantly lower the living standards, b) solicit foreign quality workers to fill in the growing gap and c) lower the expected retirement money of the genration that is now in their 40s, 50s and 60s; that generation does not have the time to jump from the old retirement system - paying the old until they themselves are old enough to be payed for by the young(er) - to the new one of preparing for your old age yourself. They somehow are expected to pay for their parents generation, their children and themselves at the same time, which is slightly difficult to manage. If the German fertility rate jumped to something even remotely near the UK rate, I expect quite a lot of of social economists doing dances of extacy naked in the streets.
as been pointed out before, the bulk of the population growth of the last decades wasn't because of Europeans turning out babies in unstopable volumes
as been pointed out before, the bulk of the population growth of the last decades wasn't because of Europeans turning out babies in unstopable volumes
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