> ...
> One could also argue that medical costs put a break on reproduction.
> In third world countries more carriers of defective genes may be bread ...
> even though the children who express the trait die ... their brother's and
> sister's may carry it. In the first world the financial & emotional burden
> of maintaining a sickly child may limit the family size.
> ...
It's a statistical fact that fertility rates vary depending on the
development of a country : poorer rural countries tend to have
higher fertility rates while the more developed urban countries
tend to have lower fertility rates.
The UN uses as index of about 2.0% population growth to "label"
countries
as either "developed" or "developing" (previously the political
incorrect
"under-developed").
Some Scandanavian countries are so developed that they have either zero
population growth (zpg) or negative population growth (npg).
This is why countries like Canada encourage people from the Third World
to come and live there and then put them to pick apples.
-----------------------------
Hakeeb A. Nandalal
nanco@trinidad.net
http://www.caribinfo.com/als/
-----------------------------