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India's surprise baby bust

economist.com

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Re: India's surprise baby bust

#701

Post by gessha »

scoofy wrote: post #449
shimman wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that is you are reading into what abundance is. Abundance is mostly neoliberal economic ideas repackaged for the current iteration of consultants where workers are entirely excluded from the processes, unions are the enemy, and regulation is actually evil this time (pinky swear this time!). Thank fuck voters aren't buying this garbage. I also find your retort equally misleading. Social housing is a solved issue.…

You clearly did not read the book or understand the message. I say this as someone who thinks we need a wealth tax (or at least a tax on unrealized semi-liquid capital gains). >America has always been deeply antidemocratic Okay, buddy. No need to open a history book to understand what an undemocratic state actually looks like. There are plenty of actual, totalitarian monarchies that still exist.

You can call something undemocratic without needing to compare it to the actual worst country on this planet.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#702

Post by illiac786 »

smarm52 wrote: post #694

> But demographers have long shown that what really counts is girls’ education. Interesting, they mention JUST education as the deciding factor. Would it not be education AND birth control?

I think the point is, birth control usage is dependent on education rather than how hard it is to get. And maybe it is easy to get in India, I have no idea.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#703

Post by illiac786 »

i_idiot wrote: post #8

What's the strong case against population dwindling other than supporting aging population? Given the AI armageddon, it just makes sense to reduce the population. If there's less population, we need less production and less workers. Of course, countries have to deal with oldest population for a brief period of time.

I think you’re missing the point, you’re assuming this brief moment will stop. Why would population stop declining?

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#704

Post by tuatoru »

smarm52 wrote: post #694

> But demographers have long shown that what really counts is girls’ education. Interesting, they mention JUST education as the deciding factor. Would it not be education AND birth control?

Traditionally, female years of education, child mortality, and GDP per capita (in order of importance) explain 85% of fertility, and the residual is not biased in either direction.

source: Lant Pritchett, long-time development economist.

Edit: I don't think anyone outside the Taliban seriously wants to reverse the trends in any of those 3 factors.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#705

Post by illiac786 »

croisillon wrote: post #436
whatever1 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also it’s not ok anymore to rape/get married to 13yo girls. And now with a smartphone every girl knows that it is not ok.

[flagged]

It has become so tribal lately, do you even have to care about this? Just scream loudly, ragebait 24/7 and you’re good.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#706

Post by tuatoru »

illiac786 wrote: post #702
smarm52 wrote: post #694

> But demographers have long shown that what really counts is girls’ education. Interesting, they mention JUST education as the deciding factor. Would it not be education AND birth control?

I think the point is, birth control usage is dependent on education rather than how hard it is to get. And maybe it is easy to get in India, I have no idea.

Difficulty accessing birth control is greatly overstated by UN and other development agencies.

In surveys by far the dominant reasons for not using it are "my husband does not want me to" or "my family does not want me to". Those are included in "unable to access".

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#707

Post by illiac786 »

onesociety2022 wrote: post #361

Naive question- why does the human population need to keep growing? Why can’t we let it shrink? If AI and robotics are going to come to fruition in the next 50 years, why do we need so many people?

Let’s say, it’s extremely unfair to the new generations. They bear crushing social benefits for a majority of old people and are outvoted by the same old people. Until population stops reducing, or social benefits are severely reformed. The latter being the more likely, but not before the economy crashes.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#708

Post by tuatoru »

onesociety2022 wrote: post #361

Naive question- why does the human population need to keep growing? Why can’t we let it shrink? If AI and robotics are going to come to fruition in the next 50 years, why do we need so many people?

Good question.

With a lot of old people, healthcare costs go way up. In practice that means taxes go way up.

(Maybe smart AI can magically cure a lot of degenerative diseases like dementia and atherosclerosis and COPD and osteoarthritis and cancer and diabetes and kidney failure. Let us hope.)

The infrastructure we have (roads, bridges, water supplies, power lines, etc.) need maintenance. With a falling population, a greater percentage of the population needs to be dedicated to these tasks, so career choices get restricted.

(Maybe robotics can help here. Let us hope.)

With a falling population demand for any given product is falling on average.

When the population is growing, there is an implicit cushion for investment. 2% growth means that the population (TAM) doubles in 36 years, making investment less risky. With falling population, new investment is taking market share from existing vendors: competition is zero-sum at best, mostly negative sum.

Every investment is more risky so the rate of interest on loans goes way up.

With falling GDP, wages are stagnant or falling. At present young people take on debt to buy houses and things, partly in the expectation that their wages will rise so the debt gets easier to pay off over time. Falling wages make debt repayment harder, not easier, so people will not take out loans. so sales will be lower, leading to a downward spiral.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#709

Post by kopirgan »

thelastgallon wrote: post #682
kopirgan wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol "unique identity" just for 2 states is left political propaganda. Don't fall for it. Every state (for that matter, most districts) in India is unique and none are unique because there's so much in common. Depending on how you look at it. Coming to main topic, much of West doesn't have fiscal runway. But your point about getting old before getting rich is valid. But it is not all bad news. IMHO one of main challen…

That problem won't go away because India is not at 80 - 95% urbanized like the west. There are still ~50% in villages, who will continue to migrate to cities. The problem is India only has a few metros. India should be building 100+ new cities and rapidly urbanize. Cities are engines of growth. The slow migration from villages to legacy metros amplifies the infrastructure problems.

Yes. Actually it'll make sense to build new cities instead of pumping billions paying inflated land cost to build roads, rail etc. and metro systems that only pull even more crowds. Let the main cities rot, be replaced over time by new ones. Most empires did that, globally.

Re: India's surprise baby bust

#710

Post by Gibbon1 »

int_19h wrote: post #616
Gibbon1 wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You bring up assets. I think per-industrial economies the majority of couples have no ability to gain modern assets. Things like land and infrastructure was locked down. Unless you wanted to try to take stuff by force you were SOL. So only thing you could do is have a lot of children whose value was performing labor. Only encouraged by a high childhood mortality rate. Switch to an industrial society. Having children…

This entire blog post series is well worth a read: https://acoup.blog/2025/08/22/collections-life-work-death-an...

I read those before but will read them again. That narrative influenced my thinking about this. There is confusion I think because peoples attitudes tend to be stubborn over time. But they tend to match the milieu they were raised under.

An example of that is the plots in this essay. Attitudes don't change much plotted by age cohort over time.

https://www.allendowney.com/blog/2026/05/28/sexual-morality/

Summarize that we've thrown a bunch of historical peasants into an industrial society and they're reacting astutely to the new incentives. But the big change comes from those that grew up in it.

Example Bangladesh fertility rate went from 7 in 1975 to 4 in one generation and dropped to 2 one generation later.

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