and remember that all these innovations are being rolled back -- with political clout and with brute force -- by angry men worldwide, from the Taliban in Afghanistan to the xtian fundies in the US.  the US is doing everything its foreign policy and aid muscle can achieve, to prevent the promotion and use of contraceptive technologies throughout the world.  how smart is that?  and politicians in the affluent countries are busy inventing incentives and programmes to increase their national birth rates.

in the midst of dwindling resources and environmental crumbling, we're having a renaissance of natalist dogma and policy.  it's just another of those "beam me up" aspects of the present era.

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

You make a good point, but in most cases the improvement in the lot (or options) of women has only led to a slowing in the increase in population.

There are a few exceptions, like Japan and Italy where the population is actually declining or will be shortly, but I'm not sure that birth control and educated women are the main reasons.

I don't understand what's happening in Italy (momma's boys not getting married?), but in Japan women still have an inferior social position so, I would think they would still be under pressure to marry. Perhaps they do and just have fewer children. A recent study found that the Japanese have sex less often than any other developed country.

If some of us are going to push for negative population growth then we really need to come up with social policies that will allow this to happen. Japan is now pushing for older people to stay in the work force. They haven't yet examined whether all that "work" really needs to be done at all.

Japanese men who retire find that they have nothing to do and many marriages break up at that point. They have never developed outside interests having been consumed with work. Thus they find they have little in common with their wives. New retirement laws allow the wives to get part of the husband's pension, so they have less reason to stay married.

Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape