Only one, please

Reacting to an opinion article in a Canadian publication suggesting that the world needs a one-child policy, a post at the Volokh conspiracy notes:

A welfare state is in one sense a big Ponzi scheme. Without increasing numbers of people entering the scheme, there is no money to pay the people receiving the money.

Do people who fret about overpopulation have any idea of what fertility rates are in the developed world and what they tell us about the future?
China, meanwhile, is worried about its one-child policy and is finding that people do not want a second child:

Even one child makes huge demands on parents' time, he said. "A mother has to give up at least two years of her social life." Then there are the space issues -- "You have to remodel your apartment" -- and the strategizing -- "You have to have a résumé ready by the time the child is 9 months old for the best preschools."
Most of his friends are willing to deal with this once, Chen said, but not twice.
"Ours is the first generation with higher living standards," he said. "We do not want to make too many sacrifices."

For a previous post on this, see here.