It's my understanding that since humans have existed, we've ever always grown in global population.
And that growth is now slowing down because the use of contraceptives is fairly widespread.
Because the rest of the world isn't as "enlightened" as Europe, if that makes any sense.
No, it doesn't.
Why haven't they followed it thus far?
Because it still isn't as costly to have children where they live. In Western countries people are richer and the costs of living comfortably according to Western standards are so high that having children to care for is not cost effective for many.
The differences are cultural and educational, and unless the cultural paradigm changes in places like China and India
I think you will find that in China and India the culture largely favours family planning.
Firstly, of course there's a population problem
This is not obvious at all. The present population growth is largely caused by more people surviving to old age then ever before, not because the number of births is increasing.
Secondly, what does wealth have to do with overpopulation
Everything: when people are wealthy there is no overpopulation where they live. Overpopulation means that there are not enough resources in a specfic area to support all individuals in it if they were equally distributed, so it depends on the number of resources whether a place is overpopulated. A large stretch of desert may be overpopulated with a few hundred people in it, while Tokyo is not.
Thirdly, did it cross your mind that perhaps nations with millions of hungry people aren't peaceful because of the lack of resources?
Often it is the other way around: there is a lack of resources in a particular area because the people are not peaceful. War often causes the resources to be very unevenly distributed and forces many people into areas with little resources. This has nothing to do with having to many people or too little resources.
Fifthly, all resources are finite; if they weren't, they'd be free.
They are all finite, but if it was possible to evenly distribute all of them among all people in the world no one would starve and we could get a few more people as well. It is also possible to increase the efficiency of the use of resources or in the case of agricultural products, make more of them. I don't think we are close to a limit.
Is there such a problem with individuals having way more children than they can afford...
- Yes.
It think this is caused because it is very expensive to raise children in modern industrialised countries.
- But taking reproductive control now would mean we would never develop problems with overpopulation. No?
I don't think it is that simple. Whether the world is overpopulated depends on its resources remember? So if the number of resources drop dramatically, there can be overpopulation, even with fewer people than we have today. If you have an aging population, the population is not as productive at producing those resources, and population control causes the population to age: there will be fewer and fewer young people and an increase percentage of old. It is conceivable that you'll end up with many old people who cannot produce the resources they need and too few young people to produce it for them. You'll get a world with more people than the resources needed for them. Population control can cause the problem of overpopulation instead of solving it.
