Since the original topic is the global fresh water crisis, wouldn't the increased per capita resource consumption from greater standards of living offset any gains in population growth slowing?
Not necessarily; there is sometimes quite a lot of surface water in poor areas of the world, but no reliable way to disinfect it. So you get wells dug next to rivers, because the well water is clean and the river is not.
Rising living standards create the capital, infrastructure, and stability to build water and sewage treatment plants to make better use of surface water.
In the developed world, much of the "population" problem is the location, not amount, of people. Lots of people have moved to Phoenix because of air conditioning and groundwater wells. Its population growth has been driven almost entirely by migration, not birth rate.
One potential solution there is to allow accurate market pricing of water. If it becomes progressively more expensive to live there as water supplies dwindle, people would stop building water-hungry golf courses and stop moving there. Unfortunately, control of the municipal water supply is often in the hands of the local government...who is not going to willingly vote to raise the price of water on their voters, and shrink their own city.
I will offer a brief and unenthusiastic defense of that practice... the desert/arid climate can result in great yields as a result sunlight, lower use of pesticides and fungicides (dry climate unfriendly to mold and insects), and be less disruptive to - subjectively, on my part - less important ecosystems.
Rising living standards create the capital, infrastructure, and stability to build water and sewage treatment plants to make better use of surface water.
In the developed world, much of the "population" problem is the location, not amount, of people. Lots of people have moved to Phoenix because of air conditioning and groundwater wells. Its population growth has been driven almost entirely by migration, not birth rate.
One potential solution there is to allow accurate market pricing of water. If it becomes progressively more expensive to live there as water supplies dwindle, people would stop building water-hungry golf courses and stop moving there. Unfortunately, control of the municipal water supply is often in the hands of the local government...who is not going to willingly vote to raise the price of water on their voters, and shrink their own city.