The number of children between 0-20 has been rather steady for the last decade or two, the only reason the world population is growing is that the average age is increasing, not that an ever increasing amount of children are being born.
Eventually the population will stabilize by itself and possibly also start decreasing as the countries that have the largest population growth continue toward full industrialization and modern ways of living.
Not a bad idea, but maybe we should also educate the people living in the wealthiest nations to consume less and have more sustainable life styles? 80 percent of the world's natural resources are spent by the wealthiest 16 percent after all: http://articles.cnn.com/1999-10-12/us/9910_12_population.cos...
I don't think I could work any less than I already am, but I agree with you.
I am also convinced that in order to "do more with less" in the future, we will need to actually solve the basic problems that keep prices high on food, clothing, shelter, and knowledge. I'm not sure how to do that when science is a prisoner of copyright, for example, and education costs as much as a house, for example; I just don't see how to solve the physical problems, even for myself, in any big way when we can't collectively solve even the self-inflicted/social ones like copyright (and superstitions, and violence, and, ...). I think working less would be a sign of success, but I'm not sure how to get there from here. People won't do it voluntarily (nor should they be forced to). The government can always tax the wealthy and redistribute, but I'm leery of promoting that and just giving the government more power. (Now they want my guns too.)
It doesn't help that the U.S. defaulted on it's gold debt in the 70's (brilliantly calling it "going off the gold standard") and now U.S. money is just an interest-bearing loan (as opposed to you, the government, just printing paper...), which means people pay interest on public debt, the rich get richer, keeping the pressure on and prices going up. (Most of the world's currencies are U.S. dollar backed, so it's not limited to the U.S..) It's musical chairs: ie, every now and then someone has to lose big (one chair is removed, in the form of interest payments), and the pie gets divided among fewer and fewer (and their children). No one's going to work less with that gun in their back.
That's why, as unpopular as it can be around here (hey, everyone has to make a living), I think we have to fix this idea that we can charge for knowledge (or patent it, or copyright it), because we're really not (IMHO) going to be able to get to the important stuff if we keep fighting over the "how" (most food plants are sterile for goodness sake). I can't justify giving an inventor, even if it's me, a monopoly on an idea if it just means the whole world needs my permission to solve their own problems.
We start with the global emancipation of women. Unfortunately we barely seem able to get that going in the most developed country in the world, which makes doing it in the poorest a lot harder.