Why has the human population increased so much in the last few centuries, although we actually invented effective birth control methods?
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Probably the biggest contributor is antibiotics and germ theory. The life expectancy estimates of like, 30 years are a bit misleading because they usually include infant mortality, which skews the average. If you manage to live past 5ish, you were likely to live to 60ish. But you were *not* likely to live past 5 years old. Many cultures didn’t (or don’t) name children properly until they are several years old. Sure, your great great grandparents probably had like eight kids, but only three of them may had lived to adulthood.
The introduction of germ theory, antibodies, vaccines – the beginnings of what we would recognize as modern medicine – changed that infant mortality rate *drastically*. In Western countries, you are actually quite likely to live to be at least five.
That’s changing in developing countries, too. Historically, there is a transition period where developing countries get access to modern medicine and the infant mortality drops, but their fertility rate lags behind and they keep having kids as if half of them will die. After a few generations, the county is more industrialized and they have more access to family planning, and the culture changes so that women join the work force and aren’t just baby factories. Fertility drops and more families start just having “replacement” kids, ie: just two.
Right now, a significant chunk of the world is stuck in the transition – namely India and rural China. So the population there is still growing. But the last 200 years or so has seen all the western nations go through that transition.
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