On a farm, a child is an investment—an extra pair of hands to milk the — Population decline

"With populations aging and declining almost everywhere, countries may one day be competing for immigrants."

"In the 1990s, as the consequences of a chronically low birth rate begin to sink in, Ottawa opened the floodgates, inviting 250,000 immigrants a year to come to Canada."

"[The world] population may shrink for multiple reasons, including poor nutrition and epidemics."

"… the coming century contains a population problem that should be of great concern because of the ongoing momentum that will cause global population to crest just as global population growth hits its nadir. This means that the resource scarcity problem foreseen by Malthus will become most severe just as the technological solutions provided in the past become most costly to produce. Ironically, the population problem foreseen by Malthus is one where declining population growth rates may be the primary reason for substantial increases in global resource scarcity."

"[The operative] mechanisms [leading to] the collapse of the human population will be starvation, social strife, and disease. These major disasters were recognized long before Malthus and have been represented in western culture as horsemen of the apocalypse. They are all consequences of scarce resources and dense population."

"The ultimate measure of human success is not production but reproduction. Economic productivity and profit are means to reproductive ends, not ends in themselves."