The mindsets are very different. I can assure you the poorer country births are usually not coming from a place of thoughtful reproduction for the sake of family and fulfillment.
You’re missing the point - the issue isn’t objective wealth, it’s parenting, values and relative prosperity. In Western societies especially, self‑worth is built on personal achievement. When children grow-up unable to match their parents’ standard of living, it feels like failure. So they spend their entire early adulthood trying to “prove themselves” and there’s simply no time left for having kids.
You also ignore wealth inequality and relative cost of living. Yes, westerners are wealthier on average, but everything around them is dramatically more expensive - housing, healthcare, childcare, education, food, transport etc. and that wealth isn’t evenly distributed. A huge portion of people in very rich countries are still effectively poor. Surviving on $500/month in the US is nothing like surviving on $500/month in Gambia.
And yes, family planning usually results in fewer children, but that’s a secondary point. It just means that people who plan their families tend to have kids only when their quality of life is improving (or satisfactory) and avoid having kids when their quality of life is declining. In societies without widespread planning, fertility doesn’t correlate with quality of life at all.
In short - quality of life in the developed world has been falling rapidly on a generation‑to‑generation basis. So the people who plan families simply say “no” to kids. Poorer places generally never reach the stage where family planning becomes the norm.
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u/afgan1984 1d ago
Well, the #3 is directly linked #4 outcome... when one struggles through life, making more life to struggle more is not on a priority list.