Do wealth and urbanization always lead to reduced population rates?
A. Generally, prosperity brings so many different forces that keep fertility below replacement. You have urbanization, you have women’s education, you have women’s employment, you have higher survival for children so that couples say, “Well, two’s fine.” Q. Is it more significant that you have these different population trends in different places or just that we’re heading toward nine billion? A. You’re having changes in ratios between countries. Right after World War II Europe was almost three times as big as Africa. By 2050 Africa will be three times as big as Europe. These changes are very, very important, and the balance has implications for production, consumption and also relations between those countries. Then you start thinking, Russia has this number of people. Pakistan is bigger. Pakistan has nuclear weapons; well, so does Russia. So you start thinking about what is a power, and what’s not a power. I’ve been talking for 10 years about Pakistan being a problem area, even befor
