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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

#341

Post by _hypx »

bluesmoon wrote: post #225

When I was a child about 40 years ago there was a slogan "हम दो, हमारे दो" which translates to "We are a couple, we will have two children". Then in my teens it turned to "हम दो हमारे एक", ie, "We are a couple, we will have one child". It was on TV, in print ads, on the sides of buses, everywhere. There was also a huge move to make contraception easily available to every woman in the country. Then in the 90s TV was p…

The whole thing was just fearmongering. Many other countries have seen huge drops in fertility rates without any heavy-handed methods.

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

#342

Post by wallacoloo »

zpeti wrote: post #124
mpol wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dark horse in this race will be climate changes. These predictions look natural, as extrapolation from the current situation with decreasing growth in population. I hope we (the politicians) don't hold tight to a strict plan, because if and when climate changes start to have a big impact, millions of people might have to move to different countries. These two things combined, decreasing population and massive mov…

Climate changes are way exaggerated. Almost all official predictions by IPCC etc, which aren’t addicted to clickbait, say that over the next few decades we will lose some GDP growth due to climate change. But world GDP will still grow. There won’t be starvation, or famine, etc. This is not the world ending apocalyptic scenario that’s thrown around in the media. Perhaps a few countries will become uninhabitable, but I…

i seriously recommend anyone downvoting this to read the actual IPCC reports [1]. not denying that climate change is happening and causing harm, but the proximate effects due to climate change (i.e. extreme weather events, loss of biodiversity, decreased food/water safety) are worth understanding concretely. the biggest worries from climate change IMO are all the second-order effects, and somewhat socio-political in nature: catastrophe in one region tends to “spread” to other regions, e.g. when one country experiences famine the adjacent countries can be overloaded with migrants and now they also have not enough food, leading to a contagion of food insecurity. if the biggest problems really are socio-political (based on how unevenly climate change hits throughout the world), it hints at other options for deadening the blow to climate change that a typical reader might not be aware of. it also points to the risky idea that the most effective way of decreasing these sorts of localized-but-contagious catastrophe really is to lift every region out of poverty (giving them the same tools we have to easily relocate or react to shocks), which today usually means prioritizing energy security (even if unclean energy) and definitely not any of the “degrowth” ideas casually tossed around.

[1]: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/SR15...

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

#343

Post by decremental »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #333
decremental wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get why mothers not being at home is seen as bad. As though it's a greater good for society that instead they're punching in numbers into a spreadsheet at a widget factory. Sounds to me like the only winner there is the widget factory. It didn't used to have to be this way and maybe we should figure out why it has to be that way now, then fix that.

>As though it's a greater good for society that instead they're punching in numbers into a spreadsheet at a widget factory. It might not be the greater good for society, but it is good for women who want to be self sufficient. >It didn't used to have to be this way and maybe we should figure out why it has to be that way now, then fix that. It turns out that many women want to have financial freedom (i.e. freedom), a…

Financial freedom in their marriage? If you meant single moms then they have to be able to make money. That much is obvious. But then let's address broken homes. If we're going to tackle big problems that one seems like it would have the greatest impact. Not least of which for the kids, who seem to not be factored into this conversation at all.

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

#344

Post by hardtke »

zpeti wrote: post #48

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 ne…

> - 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'm not sure that high birth rates are driving emigration so much as corrupt and ineffective governments, and I'm not sure that corrupt and ineffective governments are consequences of high birth rates. And by corruption I'm not refer to the US variety (political donations) but instead low level bribery that is required as part of every day life.

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

#345

Post by closeparen »

cute_boi wrote: post #226
paxys wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just by simple numbers – no, you don't need a sustainable population rate. We were perfectly fine as a species when the population was half or a tenth or hundredth of what it is now, and will still thrive if it gets to that again. The problem is the demographic breakdown. If the rate of growth is decreasing it means that when your current population ages and exits the labor pool there won't be enough young people to…

do we need that labor pool considering we are progressing in technology? 100 years ago there were no factories we see today etc. But day by day with technological advancement we are automating lot of things. So I really don't think we need that much labor we required yesterday. Is population problem really a big deal considering we already have a big elephant in room already like climate change, scarcity of resources…

We're automating a lot of things, but not healthcare. There we're inventing treatments that enable the dying to receive more and increasingly sophisticated care over longer periods of time.

This is the issue that became known as "death panels" in the Obama-era healthcare debate. We're pretty committed to not solving it.

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

#346

Post by lemoncookiechip »

Beaver117 wrote: post #207
distances wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I wouldn't talk of extremely generous before the benefits cover a larger apartment to house the kids, and other indirect expenses. Unlikely to happen!

I'm sure some people are happy to move to the countryside for cheap larger housing if the government pays them

Living in the countryside, isn't going to put food on the table for most. People are living the countryside to find jobs and a better life, not the other way around unfortunately.

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

#347

Post by wallacoloo »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #294
paxys wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While technology has definitely made things better over the last few decades, we are still very, very far from the post-scarcity society that we like to envision. The majority of people on the planet today are still doing back breaking labor in order to survive.

I always thought that when our western governments talk about this problem, they are not concerned with the back breaking work that needs doing, but the amount of tax being paid by younger generations not enough to cover pensions and all the expensive medical conditions old people have. I think its mostly a financial problem, not a physical labor problem.

> I think its mostly a financial problem, not a physical labor problem.

what does this mean? i assume in your picture, the taxes (finance) are paying for the labor. if not, what is it that we’re struggling to finance?

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

#349

Post by wolverine876 »

woodruffw wrote: post #195
ativzzz wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women with four children will most likely be full time moms for the majority of their productive lives so that's a pointless benefit, unless this policy manages to somehow reverse gender roles as well.

Given Orban's other political proclivities, enforcing traditional gender roles is likely an intentional outcome of this policy.

> Given Orban's other political proclivities, enforcing traditional gender roles is likely an intentional outcome of this policy.

So is increasing the proportion of 'true Hungarians' compared with immigrants. Race nationalists have long promoted high birth rates.

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

#350

Post by givemeethekeys »

beeboop wrote: post #329
givemeethekeys wrote: post #146

Urbanization and education have been among the two greatest downward pressures on population growth.

Cynicism is a massive contributing factor to my vasectomy. Don't underestimate doom and gloom :)

Cultures that feel threatened tend to produce lots of babies to give them a better chance of survival =).
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