Population does not matter .what matters is population and the average resources footprint.
China and India having 2.5 billion if they are subsistence farming is a much faster different thing that China and India with some approximation of western lifestyles.
Demographic decline does seem endemic to urbanization, but urbanization is hand in hand with western consumption rates.
Net economic activity will probably increase in net, but with, uh, bumps.
There are several factors that operate successively and in combination to reduce fertility: infant survival (low infant mortality); secularisation (loss of religion); urbanisation (or more accurately neolocality, the practice of moving away from family at the time of marriage); education, particularly of women; and stronger government (stability and military defence, universal application of the law, protection of property rights (perhaps counterintuitively)).
IMO urbanization broadly includes secularization (consumer culture), education (needed for urban jobs), education/empowerment of women working (two jobs to survive rather than one, women work to survive in cities rather than stay in extended family homes)
But of course you are correct. Urbanization is responsible for the largest population migrations and geographic redistributions of the last century. I consider it the major factor in the demographic birth rate declines.
Comments
Population does not matter .what matters is population and the average resources footprint.
China and India having 2.5 billion if they are subsistence farming is a much faster different thing that China and India with some approximation of western lifestyles.
Demographic decline does seem endemic to urbanization, but urbanization is hand in hand with western consumption rates.
Net economic activity will probably increase in net, but with, uh, bumps.
There are several factors that operate successively and in combination to reduce fertility: infant survival (low infant mortality); secularisation (loss of religion); urbanisation (or more accurately neolocality, the practice of moving away from family at the time of marriage); education, particularly of women; and stronger government (stability and military defence, universal application of the law, protection of property rights (perhaps counterintuitively)).
IMO urbanization broadly includes secularization (consumer culture), education (needed for urban jobs), education/empowerment of women working (two jobs to survive rather than one, women work to survive in cities rather than stay in extended family homes)
But of course you are correct. Urbanization is responsible for the largest population migrations and geographic redistributions of the last century. I consider it the major factor in the demographic birth rate declines.