| Poverty and high birth rates are generally just the other way round: the former causes the latter (in a way, it is not the only thing). First, richer countries mean better access to medical ways of controlling births, then they tend to have a better education too, which also means more knowledge about family planning, another point is that traditionally having many children in poor countries meant some will survive medical problems or famines so there's people left to care for you when you're old. Reducing the number of children in poor countries will make a small dent into poverty, but it will not remove the core issues. |