> But if you do nothing the second generation would be even larger still since the fertility rate of the extremely poor is so high.
Obviously the population must eventually plateau or decline, due to finite resources.
I think it will be extremely difficult to alleviate the cause of poverty in many African countries. It seems that they have a high fertility rate mainly because their religion/culture demands it. It seems just as difficult to get the fertility rate down there as it would be in Utah (nigh impossible unless nature forces the issue).
Your entire view in this thread sounds very Ehrlichian to me.
Just to explain, Paul R. Ehrlich was wrong when he predicted hundreds of millions of Indians would die because of famines and people still ask questions to him about this just to amuse themselves. I believe anyone holding similar beliefs will be wrong again, at least for the next half century.
Fair, people also were dying in India in the 60s and 90% of the population lived on less food than they needed every day (according to Amartya Sen), Ehrlich said it would get worse with famines because of lack of resources and hundred of millions starving to death, he was wrong and Amartya Sen argued that malnutrition in India correlates more with corruption than with lack of resources.
To be fair a great number of Indian children still suffers from malnutrition but my argument is that the situation improved because the world is not static as Ehrlich predicted, Africa will also improve in the long run with the advent of modern agriculture techniques.
> ... Africa will also improve in the long run with the advent of modern agriculture techniques.
In the long run that can't be true, when the population continues increasing. There's a practical limit to agricultural yield, even if output can be tripled sometimes. You could generalize that statement as "<unsustainable thing> will improve in the long run with the advent of <thing that kicks the can down the road>". The US debt can be substituted, for example. Always a better solution is to address the "unsustainable" aspect. One shouldn't be fooled into thinking the unsustainable thing became sustainable when the can got kicked down the road for a few decades.
Overpopulation leads to corruption. The situation becomes "every person for themself" to survive.
A fair point, but as a statistician your case is what we use to call hasty generalization, it's a logical fallacy if you cannot argue about it from the data. If it is unsustainable you just to show that it appears to be the case.
There's data out there and from what I have read African's fertility rate is lowering, albeit a little slower than some people wished it would. We just have to wait some more years and see what happen. I believe Africa will follow the footsteps of every developing country until now and will have a society of greater urban population and lower fertility rates with economic growth. India and China are still in their way following this path.
Obviously the population must eventually plateau or decline, due to finite resources.
I think it will be extremely difficult to alleviate the cause of poverty in many African countries. It seems that they have a high fertility rate mainly because their religion/culture demands it. It seems just as difficult to get the fertility rate down there as it would be in Utah (nigh impossible unless nature forces the issue).