Are Babies for Idiots? Maternal Urge Decreases in Women with Higher IQ

[GliderGuider]

46. There are a growing number of people who don't think the problems are solvable any more.

It's not necessarily fear, although fear does make a strong appearance near the beginning of this recognition process. It's more a sense of realistic acceptance that the human trajectory is too far along, and that the combination of the Earth's deteriorating physical condition, backed up by human resistance and inertia makes significant deviations ever more difficult.

Anthropologist and demographer Virginia Abernethy has developed a theory she calls the fertility-opportunity hypothesis. In place of the demographic transition theory with its emphasis on education and income, her hypothesis states that fertility follows perceived economic opportunity. It's interesting, as global fertility has been falling since 1970 or so, in lock-step with the flattening of the growth in primary energy consumption which is a very good proxy for economic opportunity.



One other factor is probably related to the demographic transition theory - the world's people are now on average becoming wealthy enough that children aren't an absolute requirement for survival. As a result the perceived economic decline in the medium-term future changes children from an economic and social benefit to an overall cost. That has a greater influence in prompting people not to have as many children.