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India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

science.org

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Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#3
My "modest proposal" for humane population reduction is: every individual is born with the right to have one child. A couple then, can have two children, which is below the natural replacement rate of 2.1 leading to a gradual reduction in human population naturally. People who don't want to have kids or can't for whatever reason could sell their right to others who want to have more than their normal allotment while maintaining the lower-than-natural replacement rate. There are other complexities that would need to be considered and managed but it seems to me to be the most ethical way to reduce population, if that is desired.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#4

My "modest proposal" for humane population reduction is: every individual is born with the right to have one child. A couple then, can have two children, which is below the natural replacement rate of 2.1 leading to a gradual reduction in human population naturally. People who don't want to have kids or can't for whatever reason could sell their right to others who want to have more than their normal allotment while…

Does not work. Education and access to medicine does.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#7

Isn't this going to create another problem. Where the country gets old before it gets rich?

Depends on what you mean by rich. India’s per capita income is more than 3 times what it was 30 years ago. So it can easily support significant social programs for the elderly, though not to western standards.

On top of this western productivity is linked to low birth rates enabling a larger percentage of the population to work. So low birth rates may be required for a wealthy country rather than being just the result of a wealthy country.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#8

Isn't this going to create another problem. Where the country gets old before it gets rich?

There is A LOT of slack in a population of that size. Most women don't even work yet. Even if population declines, the labor force will continue to rise for a long time.

Re: India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman

#9

Isn't this going to create another problem. Where the country gets old before it gets rich?

Why is the goal to get rich? That seems lame and shortsighted

Yeah, screw social mobility. Stay poor!
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