[red-iron-pine]

security is relative.

as a westerner most you, if you lose your job, will have no way to feed yourself. how many of you have the skills, infrastructure, and available bodies on hand to set up a subsistence farm? where is the land to be able to do that?

the guys in Niger are a lot closer to the land, to traditional food-ways like herding animals, and don't have much by way of creature comforts, which means they don't have much to lose, may have things to gain, by having kids.

in many ways it keeps them poor, but poor with a lot of kids is a society that continues, while rich but depress and to anxious to go outside and meet people and breed is a society that doesn't have a future.