Borrowing heavily from Greg Clarks, ‘The Conquest of Nature’, Mark has an insightful post on his blog. The write-up has some nice comparisons between Europe and Asian societies and how the culture influences population growth. Married couples in Asia live with their parents and this removes the limitation that the man has to be productive and well-off enough to pay rent on a house of his own.

However, the conclusion of the article that countries like India avoided large-scale starvation by either female infanticide or by neglecting the health of female children is quite absurd.