The world population is growing because the birth rate exceeds the death rate, so to stabilize the world population either the birth rate needs to drop, or the death rate needs to increase. The most cited reference for population studies is the projections of future population (PDF) made by the Population Division of the United Nations. The UN report projects the world population to eventually stabilize as a result of countries settling in to a birth rate that falls around the replacement level.
A commentary by Stephen Warren in the open access journal Earth's Future takes the UN report to task for focusing on birth rate. He notes that all species generate offspring in numbers well above the replacement level of two, but you don't see historically the kind of population growth like you do with humans. He argues that despite all the negative feedback mechanisms on population (such as war and pestilence), it seems that Malthus (PDF) was correct that food supply is the driving factor, and wonders whether it is even possible to stabilize the world population until food production levels off.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 27 2015, @02:33AM
Two parents being permitted in the workforce rapidly means two will be required unless you want to chop your lifestyle in half, and the more kids you have the less mom ends up net earning after restrictions to career and obvious day care costs...
I guess you have to decide what is more important. Two worker families or mass human die-offs?
Also the trick is to keep them poor but aspirational and not absolutely dirt poor, then eliminate medical coverage and add a lot of "screw them over" child rearing costs like $40K/yr college and $200 car seats and $25 pediatrician copays and stuff like that. Then when they're just barely scraping by with 2 kids and think about what they'll have to give up to afford a third, they don't have the third kid.
The great irony is that these things have high cost in the first place because we were supposedly helping these people with these very costs.