I view birth rate reduction as a sign of success, not failure. It’s no coincidence that birth rate correlates both strongly and negatively with everything associated with high quality of life, from per-capita GDP, to level of education, to gender/sex equity. Of course, there is no way to switch from exponential population growth to sustainable population maintenance without a period in which the population’s age distribution is “top heavy.” This can of course be used by the crafty and devious as an argument against Social Security, or as an argument against the responsible preference for smallish family size, or both. But the “baby boom” generation will eventually pass through the python and be excreted into the hereafter. The much-ballyhooed “demographic crisis” of the so-called welfare state is a temporary problem, which I don’t believe to be the case for the alternative.