An ecologist took a whack at the relationship between wealth, population
size and human history a few years back in "The Fate of Nations", by Paul
Colinvaux.
Colinvaux's take on this is that humans fill different economic niches, much
like plant and animal populations. The wealthy niche is rather small, but
consumptive. Necessarily, wealthier people have fewer children, because
there is a smaller economic niche for them to fill. He applies all these
ideas to human history, e.g., war.
One of Colinvaux's ideas is that environmental phenomena such as drought
causes wars because of the shrinking of the resource base. For example in
recorded history, the people in the Asian steppes start wars every 500-600
years corresponding with major drought there.
To me these ideas are sort of appealing, but no doubt more complicated. The
idea works within a culture better than cross-culturally. People in
developing countries without a social security system typically have more
children to insure that a few of the children survive to support them in
their old age. In India, for example, the boys are the likely caretakers of
the elderly. So, to insure that one boy survives, people in the villages
have 2 boys. Since it is equally likely to have girls, the average village
family has 2 girls. It is pretty logical then that the average family size
in India is 4 children. I don't know what the average family size is for
the middle and upper class in India, but I'm sure that the number is well
below 4 children.
In India, the "1 girl + 1 boy = happy family" family planning signs are
everwhere. It isn't lack of education that drives this, so much as economic
necessity.
Beth
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