Low-fertility Europeans more fertile?

According to a New York Times article by Nicholas Wade, Icelandic researchers may have isolated a portion of DNA on the 17th chromosome that may cause Europeans to be more fertile than the rest of the world.

"The region is not a single gene but a vast section of DNA, some 900,000 units in length, situated in the 17th of the 23 pairs of human chromosomes. In some Icelanders, the Decode team found, the section runs in the standard direction but in others it is flipped. Looking for any physical consequence, the Decode researchers found that women carrying the flipped or inverted section tend to have slightly more children."

In turns out that 1 in 5 Europeans have this chromosome inversion. I think this is an interesting find, because, in recent years, Europe has been known for it's dramatic depopulation, which is due partially to emigration, but also to a sharp decline in its fertility rates. We should be thankful that this gene is most common in an area of the world where people have already decided to have less children and rare in places like Africa and Asia, where they are struggling to keep population under control.