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India defuses its population bomb: fertility falls to two children per woman
- jelliclesfarm 5y agoCarrying capacity is around 1-3 billion. We should be fine with one billion. Point to note: 1600 AD: world population was 500 million. 1975: 3.5 billion. We’ll be fine as a species at one billion tops. It’s better for the planet too.
- seshagiric 5y agoWe two, ours two. This is forever etched into our brains :)
- Callmenorm 5y agoIsn't this going to create another problem. Where the country gets old before it gets rich?
- nine_zeros 5y agoThere 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.
- Swenrekcah 5y agoYeah I’m fairly sure they work their asses off already. Maybe not that gets measured in GDP thought.
- tharne 5y agoI was going to say this. We have this weird habit in the West of trivializing raising one's own children, as if that's not "real work". A lot folks would rather raise their children instead of outsourcing it to strangers just to work a job they hate.
- missedthecue 5y agoI don't think anyone is trivializing it... but the government can't tax homemakers to pay for medicare, pensions, and other social services which is the relevant point of the discussion.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoEvidently, a lot of people would like to have financial freedom and accept the costs of outsourcing some portion of child rearing.
- MandieD 5y agoMany of us (and by “us,” I mean “mothers”) see it as a balance: I am outsourcing part of my child’s upbringing in order to maintain a career I like well enough that’s capable of supporting us both should life throw some curveballs at us. Say “life insurance” all you like, and my response is “unpredictable inflation”.
- f6v 5y agoIt’s outsourced to strangers anyway once children to to school.
- 8note 5y agoRaising children might not be what people are best at, and it's more efficient to work a job that can pay for this stranger, and to have money left over.
- jessaustin 5y agoThere aren't many qualities that disqualify a person from humanity, but being so bad at caring for one's own children that an employee would do a better job might be an example.
- sterlind 5y agoyou can't pay someone to love your child. only you and your partner can love your child. love is nearly as important as food to them. and you have to show that love in the attention you give them - tucking them into bed at night isn't enough.
- netizen-936824 5y agoWhy is the goal to get rich? That seems lame and shortsighted
- dotnet00 5y agoIf the country does not get richer faster than it gets older, the increasingly older population will suffer, having to work till they're older and getting less financial support (healthcare, pensions etc) because there would be proportionally fewer healthy young people to pay in to the system.
- coding123 5y agoNah - that's more of a system of control. You can definitely have a poor country where people are not slaves to mortgages. It's called building your own house. Many countries allow that.
- dotnet00 5y agoI'm not talking about mortgages though... Consider healthcare, usually older people need it more than younger people. If you have a higher proportion of older people in a population compared to younger people, you have a larger proportion of the associated costs being carried by a smaller proportion of the population, this means decreasing healthcare quality, increasing the pool of people paying in by increasing retirement age or increasing taxes. None of which are particularly good.
- coding123 5y agoMortgages are the number one cost associated with "working til you are very old". By far in poor countries healthcare is much more affordable than in rich countries. I think one of the main outcomes of rich countries is just increased costs for everything.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- teraku 5y agoThis. China faces it right now, where they are rich, but not rich enough yet
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jetsetgo 5y agoThat's true for majority of countries across the world. Not just China.
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoWhat is 'rich enough'? Looking at elderly issues in UK, noone ever is
- Danieru 5y agoChina on a gdp per capita basis is still in the middle income trap. It seems likely they can escape, but they've not gotten out of the range yet.
- redis_mlc 5y ago> China on a gdp per capita basis is still in the middle income trap. That's according to the CCP stats, which are rosy. The reality is horrific - 1/3 of the adult population earns less than $140/month, and half of those zero. China is currently importing half of its energy and food, a situation that can go pear-shaped in only a few months of famine (or mining its harbors, etc.) Every time you see a major flood ruining crops across a province, that's a million starving peasants who won't make it to the next harvest. China is a train wreck in slow motion.
- Retric 5y agoDepends on what you mean by rich. India’s per capita income is more than 3 times what it was 30 years ago. So it can easily support significant social programs for the elderly, though not to western standards. On top of this western productivity is linked to low birth rates enabling a larger percentage of the population to work. So low birth rates may be required for a wealthy country rather than being just the result of a wealthy country.
- tsol 5y agoBut what was the actual per capita income 30 years ago? 3 times not much is still not very much. So I don't see how is a given that they can institute suitable social programs. It's still a question whether or not that'll be the case even for first world western countries
- Retric 5y agoIndia’s per capita PPP is ~6k$ USD per year, but it’s not equally distributed. Ignoring economic growth and assuming a population distribution that eventually looks like the US (16% of the population over 65) allocating say 8% of GDP to the elderly would provide a standard of living better than most of them had 20 years ago and in fact many would see an income bump at retirement. Of course that doesn’t pay for significant medical care etc, but I also ignored economic growth. By the time India has US style age demographic breakdown things should look significantly better.
- Ericson2314 5y agoI am very suspicious of that supposed relationship. There are tons of productivity gains to be had, and nothing like a tightening labor market to force them.
- manojlds 5y agoWhich is what the article concludes with
- ashwinm 5y agoindian median age is still 28, so there is still time to get relative "rich" ($8-10k per capita as china today) in the next 20-25 years.
- naruvimama 5y agoThe cost of living in India is going to be pretty low compared to colder countries, so it shouldn't cost a lot to provide a decent lifestyle. With accelerating automation, most people are going to have to depend on a much smaller set of people/industries. A shrinking population is not bad given we make plans for the future.
- paxys 5y agoCost of living in India is low because of the large population. A generation or two from now things will look very different when there's no more dirt cheap labor to go around.
- f00zz 5y agoYes, happened to Brazil. When you've squandered your demographic dividend without escaping poverty it's basically game over.
- catlikesshrimp 5y agoReference? (What are you talking about?)
- f00zz 5y agoMany developing countries go through a phase when fertility/mortality rates start to decline, and for a while they'll get an economic boost while the working-age population grows at a faster rate than the non-working-age population. That's when East Asian countries laid the foundation for their economic growth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_dividend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_dividend
- chillacy 5y agoAlso related to the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_income_trap https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_income_trap
- renewiltord 5y agoThere is no amount of wealth that will help. Increasing societal wealth leads to increasing power to the old, who will use it to transform the young into a slave class. This is most visible in America’s response to COVID but also in Prop 13 etc.
- wavefunction 5y agoMy "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.
- omk 5y agoYou lost me at "selling their right". It is important to understand that "selling" and "right" should not appear in the same sentence when the said right is being addressed as a basic right. It opens room for abuse even in well administered jurisdictions.
- klyrs 5y agoWhat's your proposal for handling births that exceed allotment?
- raxxorrax 5y agoDoes not work. Education and access to medicine does.
- twobitshifter 5y agoThey didn’t mention the last two years as possibly contributing to less childbirth. There could be counteracting effects there, stuck together with nothing to do, vs nobody to meet and nothing to do - but it at least deserves a mention. This 2019-2021 drop could bounce right back up if people chose to delay childbirth.
- Retric 5y agoIndia has had falling birth rates for decades and it was already close to replacement rate in 2019, so a bounce back is going to have a negligible impact on demographics. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/india-s-falling-fertility-rate-1950-to-2020.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/india-s-falling-fertilit...
- newhotelowner 5y agoI know more Indian couples who has only 1 child vs 3. In my family (my generation), not a single couple has more than 2 child. My family's replacement rate is below 2. From my dads side, we are 12 cousins. We only have 18 kids. My village in India has roughly 440 people. Not a single couple that got married in last 20 years has more than 2 kids. Before Covid, we had a middle school reunion. Every single one of us had 1-2 kids. I have 8 best friends (Married for 15+ years). Only one of my friend and I have 2 kids. Everyone else has only 1 kid. Pretty much all states except a couple are below replacement rate of 2.1. And some are way below 2.1.
- kshacker 5y agoGreat anecdotes but situation varies from state to state. Fertility rates vary from 1.1 to 2.4 and 3.0. Why did I mention 2.4 AND 3.0 because these 2 states account for a quarter if not more of the Indian population. This is not to say your anecdotes are wrong but there exist different Indias and some of them have not seen the modern light.
- gromitss 5y agoThat’s not it. Most of South Asia has been seeing a drastic drop in birthdate over the last few decades.
- JoeAltmaier 5y agoIf lifespans increases then the population will still grow for some time. And it's increased steadily for the past 70 years.
- manojlds 5y agoRural India wasn't affected at all by covid, and main period was April-May 2021.
- JoeAltmaier 5y agoI was just making a pedantic statistical observation. E.g. if people lived for 01000 years then even a tiny amount of births and population still increases. If people live forever, population grows forever. For every increment in lifespan, population grows until death rate matches whatever birth rate has been achieved.
- random314 5y agoThis is 100% false https://api.nationalgeographic.com/distribution/public/amp/science/article/see-how-rural-india-has-been-overrun-by-the-pandemics-second-wave https://api.nationalgeographic.com/distribution/public/amp/s...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- lostlogin 5y agoThat’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-coronavirus-cases-257299-2021-05-22/ https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-reports-daily-rise...
- stefan_ 5y ago
- baybal2 5y agoThe "population bomb" is the invention of eugenicists trying remake themselves into demographers in a bid to stay relevant. The very same people who funded "sterilisation vans" in Asia were rooting for abortion bans in the West, and promoting "traditional family," in other words plain, old HITLERITES.
- the_doctah 5y agoYou've made a similar comment twice in the same thread now. You seem to think overpopulation is a myth.
- naruvimama 5y agoI do not think the OP meant that, OP could have meant that there is a motivated group speaking with a forked tongue.
- zionic 5y ago>You seem to think overpopulation is a myth. Not OP but I'm certainly leaning this way now after previously being concerned about it. Seemingly all/most of our advanced societies have negative population growth. I'm not sure why this is considered ok.
- bhouston 5y agoThis 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.
- tomjen3 5y agoI don't believe it is possible during the natural development of a free country to get back to having lots of children. You can do things like ban childhood vacinations so lots of children die, but that isn't exactly going to make you very popular.
- bhouston 5y ago> I don't believe it is possible during the natural development of a free country to get back to having lots of children. 50 to 100 years ago we probably didn't think it was natural to have humans willingly limit their population growth - it was viewed as completely unnatural, but it has basically happened nearly everywhere. I think you can do it via government rewards to those having larger families and starting them earlier. Housing discounts. Rebates. Tax credits. I believe Israel does this in combination with being religiously conservative, discouraging/banning most abortions, combined with a lot of government incentives, discounts -- in fact many of the people moving into the occupied territories are people starting families as the government discounts the housing there.
- gizmo686 5y agoIs there a need to a sustainable population rate? There are about 8 billion humans on the planet. We can sustain a sub replacement birthrate for generations. There is a good chance we can sustain it for long enough to solve aging; or at least significantly push back the ~100 year limit to human life. Once we do that, we will need generations of sub replacement fertility just to compensate for having more generations being alive.
- zpeti 5y agoGlobal 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.
- bhouston 5y ago> I predict these issues will cause bigger problems than population expansion ever did. I think that unfettered population growth would have caused massive issues -- you could say that global warming is one of its legacies. But there will be a whole host of new issues as we face this new challenge of moving towards sustainable fertility. I suspect we will see a lot of government intervention with incentives towards larger families (increases bonuses as you have more children) and starting families earlier (rather than delaying to to their 30s.)
- mastax 5y agoMany European countries have extremely generous benefits for raising children, but it has been broadly ineffective at raising birth rates - with the possible exception of the Czech Republic. I agree though that governments are going to try, and they may find a way to do it. There was a good episode of The Weeds podcast, "Baby making vibes," which talked about this. Some of it is focused on the American political lens of Liberal vs Conservative birth rates, but much is broadly applicable discussion of policy and the more "vibes focused" angle that conservatives tend to take with the issue.
- pilom 5y agoI wish the US had some of the options for male sterilization/contraception that are available in India. I've asked my doctor for years about some of the options available in other countries and am always given a blank stare of ignorance.
- mitigating 5y agoWhat about vasectomies? They seem to be widely known
- mywittyname 5y agoThese can be difficult to get for younger, childless men. Even younger men (<40) with children receive push back from physicians in getting the procedure because it can be difficult to reverse.
- CountDrewku 5y agoThen you can assume alternatives would also be difficult to get approval for. I can't imagine some chemical option would be preferable to a physical disconnection anyway.
- beeboop 5y agoI think the point is other options (vasogel or something for example) are easily reversed and are non-surgical
- dougmwne 5y agoWhat options are you talking about? I am only aware of vasectomies.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- carapace 5y agoI feel more people should know about "heat-based contraception" for men. Literally, taking very hot baths can cause temporary reversible sterility. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat-based_contraception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat-based_contraception
- kumarm 5y agoIndian fertility rate also varies by state. Poor states 2+ and rich prosperous states under 2. https://twitter.com/indiainpixels/status/1464197969016614915 https://twitter.com/indiainpixels/status/1464197969016614915
- pradn 5y agoThe major states with higher fertility rates have a population of 330 million, roughly 1/4th of India's population. Uttar Pradesh: 200 million, Bihar: 100 million, Jharkhand: 30 million. Uttar Pradesh itself is roughly as populous as Nigeria or Bangladesh. It's notable that most areas of the country are below replacement rates of fertility, which is around 2.2 children per woman.
- sgt101 5y agoI wonder what a world of 2bn and falling will look like in 250 years time?
- bhouston 5y agoIn the 1960s we looked ahead and worried about the population bomb, what would happened with unfettered population growth: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/book-incited-worldwide-fear-overpopulation-180967499/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/book-incited-world... Those worst case scenarios didn't end up happening because of changes that occurred. Now we are looking ahead and seeing the opposite. That will motivate change as well -- but we need to have change.
- hersko 5y ago"That motivated change and things adjusted and we avoided the worst outcomes." or the book was just wildly wrong about its predictions.
- jimbob45 5y agoWe struggle greatly to actually understand population numbers in many countries. Consider Afghanistan, where the numbers were in part made up until recently[0]. I really wish we could see more background on these numbers. [0]https://youtu.be/WF3Rkt42wPY?t=266 https://youtu.be/WF3Rkt42wPY?t=266
- selimthegrim 5y agoSo they actually won’t hit 40m in a few decades? That’s hopeful
- ffwszgf 5y agoI’ve read that Nigerian census data is straight up made up since there’s a demographic war between the north and south and more population = more political power so there’s a strong incentive to “find” people
- sildur 5y ago> When famine struck, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson initially refused to deliver food aid, citing the country’s high birth rate. I hope there is more context with that statement, because it sounds downright evil.
- mdavis6890 5y agoRead Robert Caro's excellent volumes about LBJ. You wouldn't think so, but they are real page turners. And yes, they will leave you with the impression that LBJ was not a wonderful person.
- pixelatedindex 5y agoAlmost as if no word leaders are "wonderful people". There are a few exceptions, like Jimmy Carter and APJ Abdul Kalam.
- jwmhjwmh 5y agoJimmy Carter did some bad stuff too. From his Wikipedia page: > During Carter's presidency, the U.S. continued to support Indonesia as a cold war ally, in spite of human rights violations in East Timor. The violations followed Indonesia's December 1975 invasion and occupation of East Timor. It did so even though antithetical to Carter's stated policy "of not selling weapons if it would exacerbate a potential conflict in a region of the world."
- ffwszgf 5y agoHe might have said as much publicly but the reality is that India was a lot closer to the USSR so LBJ thought it was despicable that they were coming to the US asking THEM for help
- paxys 5y agoWait till you read up on Churchill's involvement with India. Some of it puts the Nazis he famously fought to shame.
- ridiculous_leke 5y ago
- jasonhansel 5y ago> the first national family planning program An odd euphemism for a program that, in practice, involved forced sterilizations and eugenics: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-30040790 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-30040790 According to Vox: "In 1975, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered the declaration of a national emergency. She seized dictatorial powers, imprisoned her political rivals, and embarked, with the help of her son Sanjay, on a mass, compulsory sterilization program that registers as one of the most disturbing and vast human rights violations in the country’s modern history." Source: https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/future-perfect/2019/6/5/18629801/emergency-in-india-1975-indira-gandhi-sterilization-ford-foundation https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/future-perfect/2019/6/5/186... Of course, as the OP notes, America is partly to blame. The exact quote from Johnson was...a bit more direct: > When an adviser asked the president if he wanted to promise [Indira] Gandhi more food aid during her visit, he exploded: “Are you out of your fucking mind? … I’m not going to piss away foreign aid in nations where they refuse to deal with their own population problems.” Source: https://qz.com/india/1414774/the-legacy-of-indias-quest-to-sterilise-millions-of-men/amp/ https://qz.com/india/1414774/the-legacy-of-indias-quest-to-s...
- rep_movsd 5y agoThe Gandhi family was all about total control and megalomania Sikh genocide in 1984 Putting the opposition in jail and declaring an emergency Ass kissing USSR and adopting "socialist" ideals - in the 60s you needed licenses to own things like radios and bicycles - till the 1990s there were only 3 to 4 brands of cars you could buy in India without being a millionaire The Congress party was so hated for so many decades, which is why the nationalist right-wing party of Modi keeps winning even though he is also over the top.
- no1lives4ever 5y agoSo you have replaced one over the top megalomaniac with another?
- jpgvm 5y ago
- cute_boi 5y agodoesn't matter to be honest. We are already overpopulated and those who says it isn't just doesn't know how many people live under poverty and are simply privileged. I understand if we manage resources properly we have very high carrying capacity but it is not pragmatic to solve all those problems. Human greed, corruption has no bounds and will always hinder and there is no solution, is there? Rules, laws are generally made by elites even in democracy. Further, Nature makes us inherently greedy (selfish genes perhaps?) and many of us can't deny it, can we? I think people like Elon always says declining fertility is huge problem but i simply don't see it as a problem. People like him will never suffer due to money problems and will live luxurious life. But only people working 996 realize how much exploited we are. And old age is not that big deal because of technology. One person can manage hundreds of people. We can scale a lot.
- hersko 5y agoI disagree with just about everything you said. "We are already overpopulated and those who says it isn't just doesn't know how many people live under poverty and are simply privileged." This makes no sense. As the global population has grown, less people live in extreme poverty [1]. Your entire comment is basically saying life is hard so people should not be born? This is absolutely the best time to ever be alive in history. "One person can manage hundreds of people." Have you ever been to a nursing home? This seems insanely optimistic. [1]https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty
- cute_boi 5y agoYou source [1] doesn't disprove it to be honest. It is not because of population growth that less people live in extreme poverty. It is because of technological achievement and progress in society. Basically its the time (considering we progress) that is eradicating extreme poverty not the population growth. You are linking wrong data to prove me wrong. In fact, overpopulation means more pressure on resource which we already can't mine due to various reason. You connected nursing home with wrong thing again. The problem with less fertility is that when there are lot of old people many people can't go to factory and old people can't work. But with technological advances one people can manage a lot of machines due to automation. Anyway, nursing home is easier to manage today than it was 100 years ago. Your entire comment is basically saying life is hard so people should not be born? This is absolutely the best time to ever be alive in history. Is it really? Your source clearly says "Most people in the world live in poverty. 85% of the world live on less than $30 per day, two-thirds live on less than $10 per day, and every tenth person lives on less than $1.90 per day" Would you like to be that 85% who wants to live on less than $30 per day? So, you are trying to conceal the difficulty saying life is hard but in fact it is extremely hard for many people.
- ElectronShak 5y ago"Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground" [1] From the above portion of scripture, I wonder why we humans, are so concerned about population growth. Children are a blessing from God, have as many as you'd like. 1. https://biblehub.com/genesis/1-28.htm https://biblehub.com/genesis/1-28.htm
- nynx 5y agoMost people have a completely different mental framework than you and have more evidence-based ways of deciding whether something is good or not.
- ElectronShak 5y agoSo much trust in mortals.....nah, I'll pass
- nynx 5y agoI'm not sure what else you could trust in. Even if a christian god exists, the bible was written by humans, copied over and over by humans, and translated by humans.
- ElectronShak 5y ago"We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy. I find more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history whatever." -Isaac Newton "Almighty God, Who hast created man in Thine own image, and made him a living soul that he might seek after Thee, and have dominion over Thy creatures, teach us to study the works of Thy hands, that we may subdue the earth to our use, and strengthen the reason for Thy service" -James Clerk Maxwell Two, really great minds, on whose work we depend on daily
- nynx 5y ago
- arkj 5y ago> But religion is a small factor in fertility today, Muttreja says. “Hindus in Uttar Pradesh, for example, have a much higher fertility than Muslims in Kerala. There is no Hindu fertility or Muslim fertility.” This is really strange he could have compared fertility rate of Muslims vs Hindus in Utter Pradeep and the same in Kerala. Instead he compares Muslims in Kerala vs Hindus in Utter Pranesh. Kerala is the least poor and most educated state in India and Utter Pradesh is one among the poorest and least educated states.
- gopalv 5y ago> is the least poor and most educated state I think this is the opposite of a "corrected for X factor" we usually see in studies - this is suggesting that economic situation is a bigger factor in fertility than religious practices. That should be a "duh", but having more resources resulting in fewer kids is the opposite of the malthusian hypothesis that this is limited by resources/mortality & is driven by personal choice to have kids (and kids do better when parents explicitly choose to have them). They're saying it is a small factor, not that it does not influence it, because if you correct for economic climate, there are definite differences that you can measure, because personal choice is definitely influenced by how many kids your social circle have.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoI am of the opinion that high birthrates are almost entirely a function of women’s financial independence. Childbirth/breastfeeding is such a costly experience for most women that I doubt many would opt for it more than 2 or 3 times if they had an option by not being dependent on men and/or access to easy and effective birth control.
- naravara 5y agoI don't actually think women mind those costs as much. Once you have your first, assuming no complications, many women aren't so spooked by it. I think what really happens is women with careers, hobbies, etc. have more opportunities for self-actualization that the demands of motherhood, especially of small children, get in the way of. So if women have the education and resources to pursue vocations outside the home, the opportunity costs of spending more months of your life getting sleep in 2 hour chunks are much higher. If, on the other hand, motherhood and the rearing of children is the only sort of legacy they can pursue because the glass ceiling is so low, they'll be willing to put more into it.
- nsxwolf 5y ago2 children per woman isn't defusing a bomb, it's replacing it with an implosion device.
- jeofken 5y agoIf economic prosperity results in 2 kids per woman, would evolution not favour genes that make it unlike a family is economically prosperous? Having 6 kids with different baby mamas and being an absent father is evolutionary success
- ffwszgf 5y agoYou are getting downvoted but in 2021 that’s precisely who is having the most children in developed countries. If you look up birth rates by income bracket the trend is clear: poor people and broken homes birth more children than wealthier professionals
- bhouston 5y agoShort term maybe. Long-term absence of fathers leads to increased jail time and other negative outcomes, which could affect long-term success: https://www.mnpsych.org/index.php%3Foption%3Dcom_dailyplanetblog%26view%3Dentry%26category%3Dindustry%2520news%26id%3D54 https://www.mnpsych.org/index.php%3Foption%3Dcom_dailyplanet... Promiscuity isn't a novel invention, thus it likely isn't beneficial overall if it isn't widespread right now.
- nepeckman 5y agoHaving children with multiple partners has always been and will always be the quickest way to spread genetic material. That is true regardless if women are having 2 kids or 5. Speculating that lower birth rates will somehow increase absentee fathers is baseless, that evolutionary pressure has been present since before we were human.
- naruvimama 5y agoA society that allows that will collapse when too many people are bad players. It it also true with societies where men aspire to have 4 wives each. These are societies with too many single men, and a tendency to be violent.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- hersko 5y agoA really interesting video by Isaac Arthur discussing the potential population ceiling of earth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lJJ_QqIVnc&t=711s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lJJ_QqIVnc&t=711s
- _haoa 5y agoTaking this as an opportunity to plug the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT). Pay no attention to the tongue-in-cheek name, it has nothing to do with mass suicide or genocide, and merely advocates for us to stop breeding. From https://www.vhemt.org/ https://www.vhemt.org/: > Phasing out the human species by voluntarily ceasing to breed will allow Earth's biosphere to return to good health. Crowded conditions and resource shortages will improve as we become less dense.
- reducesuffering 5y agoYou'll just naturally select yourself out of the gene pool...
- zionic 5y agoExactly. Would that be such a bad thing? Spend some time on /r/childfree. It's probably for the best that the people filling those comment sections don't multiply.
- givemeethekeys 5y agoUrbanization and education have been among the two greatest downward pressures on population growth.
- zionic 5y agoWhat if we find out it's not actually urbanization/education, but a correlating exposure that happens when societies industrialize and there's no way out? Education doesn't explain male sperm counts being down 50% in 50 years.
- givemeethekeys 5y agoYes, definitely industrialization is probably the deeper cause. Industrialization made possible the kind of urbanization and demand for education that we have today.
- beeboop 5y agoCynicism is a massive contributing factor to my vasectomy. Don't underestimate doom and gloom :)
- givemeethekeys 5y agoCultures that feel threatened tend to produce lots of babies to give them a better chance of survival =).
- beeboop 5y agoI'm not worried about my survival, I'm worried about my theoretical children's survival
- givemeethekeys 5y agoBut, by not having children, you ensure their demise.
- nikkinana 5y agoEveryone here should just stop fornicating and jump off a bridge.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nathias 5y agowhy would anyone think global population declining translates into a better quality of life?
- bluesmoon 5y agoWhen 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 privatized and it all disappeared.
- paxys 5y agoIt wasn't privatization that caused the disappearance of these ads, but the fact that the government decided to take a step back from pushing family planing after the disastrous efforts of the Indira Gandhi government. Resources/education/contraceptives/abortion are still easily available to people, just without the dystopian ads or forced sterilization campaigns.
- _hypx 5y agoThe whole thing was just fearmongering. Many other countries have seen huge drops in fertility rates without any heavy-handed methods.
- motohagiography 5y agoHas anyone stepped back and critically considered the axioms a worldview that celebrates depopulation of a people? You would have to believe it's technically not genocide if you aren't pulling a physical lever, and because you have been party to "managing" it with incentives, you haven't terminated entire genetic lineages using what is essentially deception - which further implies those lives and lineages have no intrinsic value. One would also have to believe in the primacy of their own genes and themselves as the effect, which if someone said it out loud they would be laughed out of the room for their racism. While I am personally inclined to misanthropy as a kind of social filter, the Malthusian horror of this article celebrating infertility in India strikes me as pretending that an active genocide is somehow more acceptable when you frame it as a kind of cultural euthenasia. Are they saying the quiet part out loud?
- gromitss 5y agoYes I can. A child unborn is not a child killed so it doesn’t fit your classification of “genocide”. We need about a tenth of the humans we currently have on the planet unless we figure out interplanetary colonization. This is a way that is almost entirely painless and can be achieved with almost no coercion. It’s a panacea we desperately need.
- adolph 5y ago> We need about a tenth of the humans we currently have on the planet Which tenth?
- gromitss 5y agoAnd evenly distributed slice is my answer to your troll post Adolph.
- motohagiography 5y agoThere are some indiginous populations who would probably like a word about this reasoning. It's like advocates of these policies don't think they're engaged in defacto genocide because of some abstract legalism around their imagined distance from it. I'd say so-called progressives should really examine whether they are the baddies, but it seems to come back to just being nihilists. The only thing you seem to care about is that you think you aren't getting caught.
- adultSwim 5y ago"India defuses its population bomb" "When famine struck, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson initially refused to deliver food aid, citing the country’s high birth rate." This moralistic Western framing is concerning.
- ffwszgf 5y agoIt has little to do with birth rates and more to do with the Indian governments closeness to the USSR. LBJ thought it was ridiculous that India would vote against American interests in the UN and then turn around and beg for food
- adultSwim 5y agoToo much population growth rhetoric is thinly veiled eugenics.
- dadjoker 5y agoSo sad to see this happen. Paul Ehrlich made a similar prognostication that never came to pass. There are many places in the world that did a similar thing and had to work to reverse it (S. Korea, Russia), by actually paying families to have children, and China recently reversed its draconian one child policy because they have seen first hand the problems it creates. Hopefully India doesn't run into the same problem down the road, because one a population starts to decline, history has shown that it is not reversible.
- balaji1 5y agoExactly. But how much effort was and is being put to control the psyche of the masses to achieve the population control? How much of this effort was original and far-sighted with good intentions?
- s17n 5y agoPopulation growth clearly can't continue forever; we may as well get it to zero now instead of kicking the can down the road.
- 202112162234 5y agoSomeone will need to replace the socio-feminist countries, why not India?
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- anhner 5y agoYou're sad that people won't overcrowd themselves to death? As developing nations transition grow to developed, population growth tends to fall toward an equilibrion that is also found in nature. It's a trend seen time and time again. Yet you don't see developed countries on the brink of extinction, so I think this fear mongering is unnecessary.
- Hernanpm 5y agoI agree it is happening globally, I'm from South America and there are statistics of birthrate fall as well in my country. As personal experience in my company ~90% are single childless and we are in ours 30s 40s.
- ffwszgf 5y agoLatin Americans are a lot more receptive to birth control and sterilization compared to Africans/Arabs/central Asians
- ridiculous_leke 5y agoHas anyone studied the reasons behind this?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- stupidworld 5y agoIndia had a lot people from the beginning. unlike europe they did not occupy others lands so it sounds big but nothing. As a matter of a fact no one has more chidren than 2 here but in USA most have more than 2 and they make fun of countries for doing the same. stupid world
- sumanthvepa 5y agoContrary to what some may believe, this is not a good thing for India. We Indians have grown old before we became rich. https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/557446/aging-population-sri-lanka.pdf https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/557446/a... (The story is about Sri Lanka, but the insights are applicable to South India in general. And now to parts of North India.)
- ummonk 5y ago> “Women’s aspirations have changed,” Muttreja says. They look beyond the home for job opportunities and delay marriage and childbearing. “Education is the best contraceptive.” I’m not sure I buy the story about job opportunities, as female participation in the labor force has been dropping in India, even as the country modernizes and slowly develops economically. Also, this seems kind of self-contradictory: > Some Indian politicians still talk of a population explosion and have proposed banning people with more than two children from government employment or, in Uttar Pradesh, even withholding welfare benefits. Critics say such rhetoric is often subtly aimed at the country’s Muslim minority. Muslim women on average had 0.5 more children than Hindus, according to the 2015–16 NFHS survey. > But religion is a small factor in fertility today, Muttreja says. “Hindus in Uttar Pradesh, for example, have a much higher fertility than Muslims in Kerala. There is no Hindu fertility or Muslim fertility.” If a state-level policy is aimed against those with more children, but Muslims in a given state don’t have more children than Hindus there, how can the policy be targeted at Muslims?
- pdevr 5y ago>>NFHS administered three types of questionnaires: the Household Questionnaire, the Woman’s Questionnaire and the Village Questionnaire. The Village Questionnaire was administered only in the rural areas. For each state and at national level three data files are associated with these questionnaires. Also available are data files with information on children born during the three years preceding the survey (last two children only) along with mother's basic characteristics.[1] Basically, people are given questions, and the answers are used to obtain data. The accuracy of this whole thing depends on the accuracy of those answering the questions. I would think a better way would be to compile this based on the citizens' data collected by the governments. How do other countries do this? [1] http://rchiips.org/nfhs/data1.shtml http://rchiips.org/nfhs/data1.shtml
- michaelhoney 5y ago> Today, government sterilization clinics are chiefly aimed at women; just 0.5% of contraceptive use is male sterilization. Male fragility leading to bad choices? Vasectomies are far cheaper and less invasive than tubectomies for women. More on this, from an Indian source: https://theprint.in/health/male-sterilisations-simpler-but-the-more-complicated-female-procedure-is-what-india-opts-for/728824/ https://theprint.in/health/male-sterilisations-simpler-but-t...
- amriksohata 5y agoAccording to the link. Muslim women on average had 0.5 more children than Hindus, according to the 2015–16 NFHS survey.