Does 'othering' a problem make it easier to ignore?

Apparently this week the world's population will pass 7 billion.

I've read a few articles that have discussed both how the world's population has grown so fast, and why it is a problem.

It is interesting to see the difference in approach of these themes.

The why it's a problem side of the articles makes it clear that world population growth is a global problem. Indeed, with globalisation, the world is so interdependent for resources that this is pretty simple to understand.

However, the cause of the problem is always the developing world. The articles point to birth rates of around 2.1 babies per woman in developed countries (around the rate of 'replacement', meaning the same amount of people are dying and being born), and high birth rates in Asia, even rates of 5 and above in some African countries.

There's no doubting that this is causing world population growth. However many of these articles ignore what might cause these high birthrates (such as poverty and a lack of birth control). Even so, some of these stories are illustrated using photographs of Indian or African babies.

This 'othering' of the problem is interesting. It puts the problem out of reach of the 'developed' world