5 korrents from this piece
Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.
Their wordsSurviving fertility rates can go in whatever direction society wants, whenever it wants.
Their wordsAs a result, natural selection is very unlikely to have produced in humans any predisposition or preference for a certain number of births.
Their wordsThus, TFR as an indicator is cross-culturally biased by social preferences between infanticide and abortion, child neglect and abortion, etc.
Their wordsthe key point is that as child mortality declines, live births can be allowed to decline without changing desired family size
Their wordsWhat you can see is that the “long decline” of TFR since the late-19th century is… an illusion! It isn’t real!