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These two theories come from the idea that souls are made of the stuff of the Empyrean, and are necessary for proper life to function. This is supported by the common depiction of souls 'returning' to the warp after death, implying that that's where they came from in the first place.

Theory 1: Cloning
I remember reading somewhere that the pact Dark Eldar make with the Haemonculi is that in exchange for regeneration, the Haemonculus skims a sliver of your soul off the top as payment.

My theory is that these slivers of soul are used by Haemonculi to imbue their clones with life, attaching them to cloned bodies in the great racks of vats they keep beneath the Dark City where they will mature into a soul for the body within.

This would help explain why the Craftworlders don't use cloning as it's a pretty horrific process if the above is true. It would also help explain why it's the method used by the Dark Eldar. As they're cut off from the warp hiding in the webway, they would also be cut off from the source for new souls for their newborns. After all, everything the Dark Eldar have developed has been developed out of necessity (and then brought to extremes by culture). It would make sense that cloning was too.

Theory 2: Birth Rate
If the assumption is made that a small fragment of the empyrean (a soul) is needed for a new life to be created, it would make sense that the 'Eldar birth-rate problem' is a post-fall phenomenon.

Prior to the fall, new Eldar life would be free to coalesce into souls in the warp, as safe from predation as any other race. As Eldar souls retain cohesion after death, they would also be free to siphon themselves into a newborn to 'reincarnate', as per Eldar myth.

After the fall, I'd imagine that anything that looks vaguely Eldar-like in the warp would attract the attention of Slaanesh. Thus, any newly coalescing Eldar souls would have to be phenomenally lucky to escape her gaze, making it harder to create new life. Plus, there's no pre-existing Eldar souls loitering around in the warp waiting for a suitably blood-related relative to reincarnate into.

Following this through to its conclusion is where it gets properly grimdark, and apologies if this strikes any chords with some people.

This would not necessarily result in the Eldar birthrate being any lower than it was pre-Fall. What it would do is drastically increase the frequency of stillbirths.

For me, this adds a real extra note of tragedy to the Eldar plight. The majority of the souls of their people are devoured before they're even born, and attempting to have a child for any Eldar is frequently heartbreaking.

It would also explain how a race that was forged specifically for warfare*, was populous enough after the War in Heaven to found a galaxy-ruling empire, and has a total galaxy-wide population on the billions if not more, is in terminal population decline.

*If the Old Ones intended the Eldar to be used in war with the effectively numberless Necrons, attrition rate would have been a significant concern.

Doesn't help the Eldar reproductive cycle is one of the stupidest ideas in 40k which in itself is very Eldar, even our worst ideas are better than your worst ideas
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The biggest probelm I have with this is that it suggests that souls are formed in the Warp first and then find their way into a new life. This doesn't really stack up IMO, an Eldar soul in the Warp is just going to get eaten by Slaanesh, end of story. That would mean no new Eldar at all, cloning vats or otherwise.

I would suggest that it's far more likely that a child develops a soul whilst growing in the womb (and in the case of the Eldar an old soul can inhabit a newly growing phoetus before the new soul starts to develop) or clone vat which is why the Eldar can continue.

Also, a soul isn't needed for proper life to function, look at the Tyranids.

Time and causality doesn't work in a linear fashion in the warp. I'd argue that both explanations of the birth of a soul could be true. I'd argue that it would still draw its power from the warp (conservation of energy being a fundamental law that even the warp works within).

Either way, the Eldar will have been designed with a reproduction cycle that takes into account reincarnation. Without reincarnation, the Eldar population cannot reproduce as fast as it could pre-Fall.

The result would be the same. Not necessarily fewer Eldar births, but definitely fewer viable ones.

Do Tyranids have no soul? I'd argue that they do. Their constant psychic chattering creates the shadow in the warp. Without a soul, they would have no method of interacting with the immaterium on a biological level.

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
Doesn't help the Eldar reproductive cycle is one of the stupidest ideas in 40k which in itself is very Eldar, even our worst ideas are better than your worst ideas
...

Hah

I'd also point out that the most information we have about the Eldar's reproductive cycle comes from an in-universe Imperial perspective who could very well have got it completely wrong. Remember, everything you hear in 40k canon is suspect to propaganda, misinformation and ignorance