> > It's a common thing in Brazil (for the low-income people) to have or
> > even 16 children. What do you say about then? :oD
>
> I'd say they like to be low income people. Maybe they are preparing to
> overrun the world ?

I'll stick my neck out far enough to say that that is an ignorant comment
(ie re liking to be low income).

In mitigation, it's easy enough for even the cleverest of us to make them -
step too far outside our specialist areas and we may end up making
assumptions that are illfounded without realising that we are doing it.

I'm told by "experts" that for the very poor in financially poor countries,
large families are often a reasonable response to poverty. Many children
are, of course, costly to produce but each has a net benefit (economic,
social and more) and experience has shown that the best way for the family
to survive and "prosper" is to have more children rather than less.

There is always going to be a place for a minority of poor people to get
ahead financially in such circumstances by having few or no children and
clawing their way up the heap. The opportunity is not there for everyone -
if all or many did it then the heap will collapse and most will be worse
off.

To toss in a red herring, the situation is very very roughly paralleled by
the inoculation scenario in well developed countries. In my country it is
becoming increasingly popular for some parents to not inoculate their
children against some of the world's most horrendous diseases. On average
there is a net advantage for YOUR children in doing this as long as most
parents inoculate their children. You avoid the potential side effects and
get a free ride from the protection afforded by a mostly inoculated
population. Free loading works as long as there is a large target
population. If everyone starts doing it hen you suddenly start getting
epidemics of diseases which have been largely unseen for decades except in
isolated cases.  We are starting to see this here as too many try to opt out
but still hope to benefit from the actions of the majority.



regards


                    Russell McMahon

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