[simonh]

Consumerism and media affect everyone though, but even within countries and within specific demographic groups higher wealth and higher education lead to lower birth rates. That's true everywhere.

People aren't all just corporate puppets having all their strings pulled by shadowy overlords. It's not like China with the one child policy, which I'm familiar with as my wife is Chinese. Sometimes people just make their own decisions. They make them for reasons sure, that's why there is a trend because people in similar situations tend to make similar choices overall, but nobody planned for all of this to happen.