&gt; Maybe it&#x27;s time to start thinking why people who end up living in the West are unwilling to reproduce, despite having the highest standard of living ever available to humans.<p>Not &quot;despite&quot;, but &quot;because&quot;.<p>In an agricultural society, you need lots of children because you need a lot of hands working the farm. If you&#x27;re dirt-poor in an industrial society, you need lots of children so they can all work in factories to earn money for the family. In any society with a high infant mortality rate, you need to have <i>even more</i> children because you can expect a lot of them to die young.<p>In the modern West, we&#x27;re not subsistence farmers or dirt-poor factory workers, and almost all of our kids survive to adulthood. We don&#x27;t have lots of children because we don&#x27;t <i>need</i> to have lots of children.