The decline in population led to an overall increase in prosperity in Europe relative to prior ages, as there was no longer a surplus of labor and land tenure became accessible to peasants for the first time, leading to financial growth; However, this is not the most singled reason for Europe's dominance in the post-Middle Ages, and in fact, no historians really agree on what lead to European conquest and the Age of Imperialism.

One person I find particularly interesting is anthropologist Jared Diamond, who hypothesizes that it was Europe's abundance of draft animals such as bullocks and horses that led to higher yields in general vis-a-vis other regions such as Africa and North America (though the Mexican Triple Alliance was very agriculturally productive), which led to the surpluses necessarily to accumulate growth in a positive direction.

In regards to the the decline of population, this led to changes in the way Europeans thought, which led to changes in technology and science, which was the real key to the dominance of the renaissance.