Too Many Births Days
Increasing knowledge of animal behaviors has been eroding confidence in the uniqueness of the human species. While we excel in our capacity for cognitive flexibility, innovation, and imitation, other categories of specialness are being discredited. We are not the only species that can make and use tools, nor the only animal with consciousness, with language, with emotions, etc.
But there are two factors that are securely unique to humans. One is that we are the only species that has domesticated fire. The other is that no other species on Earth REDUCE birth rates when food supplies INCREASE! This biologically baffling condition is purely voluntary. No governmental edicts are needed to produce a psychological switch regarding a couple's desire for offspring. They happen automatically when standards of living improve.
Lower births rates across the globe have followed the course of prosperity from North America to Latin America, then to Asia, and most recently to Africa. In each location, increases in income and education resulted in fewer births and lower infant mortality. Unlike the material desires of the newly prosperous, when it come to the desires for children, 'more' is is not better!
Last October, the United Nations predicted the immanent birth of the child that would escalate the populations of humans on earth to a record-breaking seven billion. This staggering number is bemoaned by environmentalists who anticipate that escalating human populations will drain and strain the planet’s finite resources. But the news is not entirely bleak. Matt Ridley in the NY Times noted that the growth of world population has halved since the 1960s. He recommends that to keep birth rates down, we must strive to raise living standards worldwide.
Matt Ridley, “”Who’s Afraid of Seven Billion People?”October 20, 2011.