For example, in the late eighteenth century, European women had about five children on average at a time when life expectancy was low due to high infant mortality, but that fertility rate now ranges from 1.4 to 2.6, depending on the country. Eventually the birth and death rates became roughly equal, and the population has stabilized at some new higher level. Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this happened in much of the West, as well as in many Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea.
