This is a great paragraph:
It is unlikely that the trend towards lower fertility will reverse. “Once having one or two children becomes the norm, it stays the norm,” write Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson in “Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline”. “Couples no longer see having children as a duty…to their families or their god. Rather, they choose to raise a child as an act of personal fulfilment. And they are quickly fulfilled.”
Thanks to education, global fertility could fall faster than expected
This Atlantic article is now 20 years old. I still remember it because it blew me away and I have believed its premise ever since: “Fifty years from now the world’s population will be declining, with no end in sight.”
Our long-term problem may indeed be maintaining a stable population, not managing a growing one.