“Meanwhile the West has been having fewer and fewer children.”
As infant mortality dropped and people became more wealthy they “needed” fewer children. In farming days the more kids the more hands to help. But today, the more children the higher the costs. People have one or two and invest more in them; piano lessons, dance lessons, summer school, college, etc. Up to a point, wealth turns out to be the most efficient birth control mechanism.
Other cultural and economic factors include a more selfish “me” outlook, women wanting careers instead of motherhood, and the huge cost of having and raising children. Now having said that, if we really wanted more children around, all we’d have to do is recreate the amazing job market that existed when we were having lots of children. People with lots of “disposable” income are more likely to have more children because they can afford them and still invest in them too. (The birth rate in the current recession has plummeted.)
The job market was purposely destroyed over the last 30 years by the government. The EPA and all sorts of job related legislation to make the US into a worker’s paradise has driven the jobs overseas. The vast majority of the populace is left out of the information revolution. They need jobs building widgets or plating metal. But both types of job are too environmentally risky for our liberal elites.
Hopefully the third world can pull themselves up and advance enough to stop overflowing into the West, but the presistence of poverty and backwardness in places like Haiti, Venezuela, and Africa makes it seem like there’s a Bell Curve factor holding them back.