Suicide by Culture
I'm not convinced of either the facts or the narrative here.<p>As to the facts, it does not look to me like Slovakia had particularly low fertility.<p>See e.g. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Slovakia" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Slovakia</a><p>"Half of all women born before 1930 had three or more children compared to one-third of Czech women of the same birth cohorts": <a href="https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol19/25/19-25.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol19/25/19-25....</a><p>As to the narrative, I've never heard of a society breeding itself into prosperity. In 2005, the 10 countries with the highest fertility in the world were: Niger, Mali, Somalia, Chad, Burundi, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, East Timor, and Angola.<p>Bottom 10 on that list were: Hungary, Slovakia, Serbia, Malta, Portugal, South Korea, Singapore, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Hong Kong, and Macau. A somewhat mixed record of success, to be sure, but would any of them want to trade places with any country in the top 10?<p><a href="http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Health/Births-and-maternity/Total-fertility-rate" rel="nofollow">http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Health/Births...</a>