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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

#41

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

coding123 wrote: post #26
wavefunction wrote: post #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…

I actually don't think overpopulation is the problem. It's the way we're going about resource usage that's the problem. If people stayed home more, grow food and instead of focus on society feeding them, they feed themselves we wouldn't be inundated with non-stop scale issues. As insane as it sounds distributed technologies seem to be saving tech - it can save humanity too. We just don't train people to be like that.…

Overpopulation is not a problem because the current population is under the limit of the amount of people the Earth can feed and most models think the current trend will reverse before we pass that point. For the rest, you have it backward. The only reason we can feed that many people is the green revolution. Subsistence farming is simply not productive enough. It would have led to famine as soon as sixty years ago.

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

#43

Post by ClumsyPilot »

teraku wrote: post #6
Callmenorm wrote: post #2

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

This. China faces it right now, where they are rich, but not rich enough yet

What is 'rich enough'? Looking at elderly issues in UK, noone ever is

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

#44

Post by lostlogin »

manojlds wrote: post #28
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #24

If lifespans increases then the population will still grow for some time. And it's increased steadily for the past 70 years.

Rural India wasn't affected at all by covid, and main period was April-May 2021.

That’s not what I have read at all. Rural India seems to have less healthcare, more poverty and plenty of covid in the reports I have read. Limited testing has reduced its visibility, but there have been some really dark news reports on how rural India is faring.

https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-reports-daily-rise...

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

#45

Post by refurb »

netizen-936824 wrote: post #5
Callmenorm wrote: post #2

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

Who needs healthcare and social services?

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

#46

Post by toomuchtodo »

raxxorrax wrote: post #32
wavefunction wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I agree that those work as well. I am afraid your post is too pithy about "does not work" to credit that bit though.

As we have seen in China, if you limit the number of children people become selective about them. In this case in regards to gender, which will develop into a large problem for the country in the future because they now have very unbalanced demographics. This will doom a lot of people to have no partner.

China’s birth rate is arguably declining because basic needs (housing) and child needs (education and child care) became expensive, applying back pressure on fertility (which is why the CCP and Xi is pushing “common prosperity” hard). People are selective on children already, which I don’t see a problem with; this is a natural result of a free society with healthcare where you can selectively terminate pregnancies you don’t want. During IVF, we were offered the option to sequence the genome of candidate embryos and pick which we wanted based on traits. The future is now.

If this creates cohorts without the ability to partner up, them the breaks of free will and socioeconomic forces. Population ballooned, and it will be painful as it contracts. Humanity ran up the credit card of population growth, and it will have to be paid back (socioeconomically speaking, with unrest and economic contraction) .

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

#47

Post by bhouston »

This is good to a degree.

But it does mean India joins much of the rest of the world with sub-replacement fertility with just a few outliers.

The challenge now switches to how to move from sub-replacement to sustainable fertility.

Japan and South Korea are leaders in sub-replacement fertility with not that much success in finding a path towards sustainable population. Both I believe are still dropping.

This is the grand social engineering challenge of the next 20 to 40 years I figure.

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

#48

Post by zpeti »

Global population will basically top out at 9-10bn.

I look forward to the problems we will face then, and the apocalyptic narratives the media will invent about this new problem. Here's my shot at a few:

- Even with better quality of life its going to be hard to make people who are over 70 work productively. But without children less and less people will need to take care of this large old age group. And they will need a bigger and bigger slice of the economy to survive.

- Wealth inequality will rise just from the fact that there are less productive people and people with wealth will live longer.

- Immigration won't be the solution for western nations that it used to be. And poor nations with insane birth rates don't have them any more. Already eastern europe, india, phillipines etc are becoming rich enough that much much less people want to emmigrate. Africas next. Cheap labour for corporations will basically dry up.

I predict these issues will cause bigger problems than population expansion ever did.

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

#49

Post by lostlogin »

wavefunction wrote: post #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…

Have you just described what went on in China?

It was an equal system. But you've just missed out the bit on what options are available to those that are a bit more equal and what happens to those that violate the rule.

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

#50

Post by stefan_ »

lostlogin wrote: post #44
manojlds wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rural India wasn't affected at all by covid, and main period was April-May 2021.

That’s not what I have read at all. Rural India seems to have less healthcare, more poverty and plenty of covid in the reports I have read. Limited testing has reduced its visibility, but there have been some really dark news reports on how rural India is faring. https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-reports-daily-rise...

It's affected by Covid like the poor parts of Africa are: there are like ten other, more basic things to worry about before you ever get to Covid.
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