How would Darwin explain why prosperity leads to lower birth rates amongst Western Societies?

Question

The fittest/richest doesn't necessarily survive...

Answer 1

Frankly, I don't think Darwin would explain it. It's probably better seen as a cultural thing and outside the scope of biology. Genetically, we haven't changed that much since the caveman stage.

In his book "The selfish gene", Richard Dawkins introduces the concept of a "meme", the replicating unit of cultural traits. Cultural traits can be passed on to (biological) non-relatives, so there's nothing unusual about a cultural trait that reduces fertility.

Answer 2

Interesting question.

If we take what Stevewbcanada has said and break it down a little further, you will see that the more prosperous of people ARE in fact the group that fall into the category of the " Survival of the Fittest"

Imagine that people are all of the hundreds of fish eggs that have been laid, and only the fittest will survive- that would be the prosperous people.

The fittest and/or richest people do not need to give birth to more children because they are already the "fittest/richest" They are at the top of the food chain, they have made it, and as surely as time goes by they will die out and thus begins the circle of life.

Answer 3

First, I would have to disagree with the correlation of fitness with richest. When the poorest among us have plenty of resources to feed their numerous children, then the societies with higher birthrates will eventually produce the most young, assuming their death rates aren't too severe. There are sometimes characteristics evolved in animals to slow down their population growth rates so that they don't over exploit thier environment. Animals such as Pandas have extremely slow birth rates. Since our modern technology and agriculture have allowed explosive birth rates in the poor developing countries or poor within our country, those populations will probably grow until the resources can no longer support them. The animals(in this case humans) that successfully reproduce and survive will inevitably be dominant in having the most number of their offspring survive in the future. I am not sure that is the most desirable outcome, but what can you do?

Answer 4

First of all, keep in mind that "fitness" doesn't necessarily pertain to the number of babies one has--it also has to do with how good you are at getting them to reproductive age. If you only have two babies, but are able to get them to an age where they each produce two more babies, then you are doing better than someone in a third world country who has six babies, who all die or suffer from reduced fertility because of disease or malnutrition.

However, such an exercise is pointless--people have long been trying to apply Darwin's theory of common descent via natural selection to social situations, but in reality, it simply doesn't work.

Darwin's theory (and current evolutionary science) has to do with the change of genetic (allele) frequencies in populations, mostly as guided by natural selection. The genes that are best able to get themselves into a new body (babies) before the old one dies, slowly become more prevalent in a population.

These are changes that take tens of thousands, if not millions of years to be noticible at a population level (unless the species a quick-reproducer which produces thousands or millions of offspring, such as insects or bacteria--this is why we have problems with pesticide and antibiotic resistance).

To try to apply this to something as volitile and fleeting as history is ludicrous. Yes, Western society is prosperous now compared to poor third-world countries, but has only been so for a few centuries. To imply that people in Africa or South America are somehow "evolving" away from the rich West because they have more babies is ridiculous, and shows a complete misunderstanding of Darwin's theories.

Despite what people say, Social Darwinism doesn't work. As Helene Thygensen says above: culture and history fall outside the scope of biology, and Darwin probably *wouldn't* try to answer this question--at least not in terms of "survival of the fittest."

Answer 5

Darwin supported the idea of stronger or taller animals erradicating others with time, due to their more enhanced survival capacities. Nevertheless, we humans are different from animals in the sense that we can choose. Even though it would make sense that richer people with more resources have more children in order to continue their legacy, it seems that their own wellbeing and comfort has overwhelmed this reasoning. Lower birthrates are due to the fact that most couples know prefer to enjoy life longer and use up all their money on themselves. If you have children you can't travel like before, your life changes in terms of responsibility. Nevertheless, this might be a good thing. If we have less rich, the poor might have better chances of getting a better life. Make sense?

Answer 6

Oh, they do survive, but they reproduce in lower rates due to their access to the resource of birth control, and education, which changes the social mores.

Among those mores is the valuing of quality over quantity.

Probably not a successful survival strategy for the long term, though.

Answer 7

You are misunderstanding what fitness means in a biological/ Darwinian sense. Fitness doesn't mean richest or in the best physical shape. Biological fitness refers to the relative ability to reproduce. Differential reproduction is what affects fluctuations in gene frequencies over time.

Darwin would explain this as simply an example of differences in biological fitness across income levels. Yes the lower income groups are more biologically fit.

Answer 8

Organisms have two basic strategies for reproduction. One is to have a whole lot of children, and hope that a few survive (fish, for example, typically lay hundreds to thousands of eggs at a time). The other is to have only a few, but invest a lot of care in raising them to help them survive. Humans adopt one or the other depending on their condition (although the reasons are probably more economic than biological). With more wealth, people can invest more in fewer children and hope to have them be successful; very poor people can only hope that one of them gets lucky.

Answer 9

First, "Fitness" has nothing to do with "richest", it has to do with ability to leave descendents. You're not justified in "slashing" the words together. They aren't synonyms.

Second, poorer people's children tend to be less healthy and more likely to die young, so it isn't obvious to me that poor people leave more descendents in the long run. This is especially true if you're comparing across richer and poorer countries.

Answer 10

Actually, the fittest will ALWAYS survive. If rich people die out, then they were unfit. The definition of fitness is survival, not quality of life.