On Nov 16, 6:18 am, Sarah Vaughan wrote:

I still agree that it's not a good idea to increase population
willy-nilly, but going to the opposite extreme can also cause major
problems - if the population growth in a given country drops too
drastically below replacement levels, then a generation or so down the
line you end up with a population that's top-heavy with dependent
elderly and not enough people of working age to support them. When I've
seen figures (and the ones I saw were some years out of date, so this
may have changed), that seemed far more likely to be a risk in Western
countries, where population growth rates were consistently at or below
replacement levels (almost always below, on the figures I saw).

Yes, especially in continental Europe -- there are statistics at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...rtility_rat e
.. European whites are largely secular and socially liberal, two
qualities negatively correlated with fertility. One can debate the
intellectual merits of socially liberal atheism, but demographically
it is a failure. Europe will become Muslim and more socially
conservative because Muslims have higher birth rates.