Rather than a burgeoning world population....the rate has actually fallen.
What is it that is driving the population slow-down in the third world?
15. After literacy, the next largest indicator of family size is religious practice. The more frequently Muslims attend mosque, the more likely they are to have a big family. A third of the 88% literate Turks never attend mosque, as is true of the 82% literate Iranians; in both countries fertility is below replacement. But only a fifth of Egyptians never visit a mosque, and fertility is up to about three.
a. In nations such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and Egypt, worship is high, literacy low, fertility rates high, poverty high, unemployment high, social instability high.
b. In nations such as Iran, Turkey, Tunisia, Algeria, there is a high degree of literacy, but face a more devastating degree of social failure in the form of a dearth of children.
16. Factors associated with population decline include urbanization, education and literacy, modernization.
a. Children had an economic value in a traditional, agricultural society. Pension systems turned children into a cost rather providers for the elderly.
b. Female literacy is a powerful predictor of population decline. Literate and affluent women have one or two children, not six or eight. The determination between one, or two, is often religious faith: the industrial world’s lowest fertility rates are found among the Eastern European nations where atheism was the official ideology for generations. The highest rates are associated with nations such as the United States and Israel, with relatively high religious populations.
Where faith goes, fertility vanishes. This is not to say that all faiths are equal in this regard: the fastest decline is taking place in Muslim countries.