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India’s population will start to shrink sooner than expected (2021)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nashashmi 4y agoIt feels a lot like some portion of policy makers are happy at this news. After all, they have been pandering for low birth rates for a long time.
- VWWHFSfQ 4y ago> pandering for low birth rates I'm having trouble understanding what this means. Supporting policies that lower birth rates?
- snacktaster 4y agoTake the 3 million square miles of USA supporting 330 million people, and add 1 billion more people to it. That's India. They have a population crisis which their land area can't support.
- reubenswartz 4y agoExcept India is ~1.3M square miles...
- Someone 4y agoThe USA (including Alaska) has about 3 times the land area of India, so India has about 4 times the population on 1/3 the land, or 12 times the population density, but I don’t think even that implies India cannot support its own population. Their GDP per capita is about 1/30th of that of the USA, or about 2/5 of that of the USA per km², and I think that’s a better way to approximate land needed than raw population size.
- snacktaster 4y agoNobody includes Alaska in these calculations because 80% of it us uninhabitable. I was only talking about the lower-48.
- Someone 4y agoEven that part is about twice the area of India.
- nashashmi 4y agoUSA has the kinds of land that cannot support so many people. This is not the issue with India. Their land is abundant in food and shelter resources, the only elements required for thriving societies.
- sinenomine 4y agoIt is impressive that we seem conditioned into attaching good sentiment to low birth rates in our considerations, while in reality it's going to make us suffer later in life. Life in a society with high dependency ratio will be necessarily harsh, unless some truly fantastical technological force multipliers will be there in time to take the load. This latter part is usually implied when discussing the demographic change, but it fails even under moderate intellectual scrutiny. I would very much like to have a serious discussion about the demography and dependency ratio trends with people across opinion spectrum.
- Overtonwindow 4y agoInteresting contradictions. Some news publications say India's population will continue to grow, overtaking China. https://fortune.com/2023/01/17/india-china-population-decline-worlds-most-populous-country/amp/ https://fortune.com/2023/01/17/india-china-population-declin...
- jchw 4y agoThat's not a contradiction: that linked article says that India may have already overtaken China, this post's article says that the fertility rate in India has dropped below replacement rate. The latter only signals the beginning of population decline; it hasn't actually started declining. China's population has been declining for a while because they have been below the replacement rate for a while.
- vidarh 4y agoIt's not a contradiction. As the article points out, fertility rates dropping below replacement does not mean India's population starts dropping now, because the population change lags the fertility rate by a few decades (EDIT: For why this is the case, consider the combination of increasing life expectancies and a still growing population "bulge"; most deaths occur in age groups that consists of fewer people than the age groups currently having children) China's population, meanwhile, has started to drop.
- kerpotgh 4y agoIt will continue to grow in the short term because there are currently women that have not reached fertility age yet. This is in the article. We will get to the peak in around 30 years at 1.6 billion.
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoThe two things aren't in contradiction. India was forcast to peak at 1.7, now that forcast is lowered to 1.6 but still higher than China which is forcasts to already be at its peak, with 1.4 billion.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kerpotgh 4y agoSeems like the world is getting its act together. Now if we could only get Africa to these levels, things might start looking rosy again…
- kneebonian 4y agoSounds like you are getting dangerously close to some ideas by some other people that history has not looked kindly on.
- dang 4y agoPlease don't post flamebait. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deltree7 4y agoThe only way we go extinct is through this. Not climate change
- mc32 4y agoI don’t think so. Humanity would do quite well at 2MMM. We don’t really need 8 or more. I agree with Elon on some things but not on this. Certainly this means a new economic system, so there are some tough things that need working out.
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoWe're 8 billion people and rising, which is nowhere near to going extinct. But if we keep multiplying and consuming planetary resources and polluting it at the same rate as today, we'll definitely accelerate our extinction.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoIt is a lot more complicated than just High population bad, low population good. Even if you're only looking at it from a atmospheric carbon perspective, there are very complex interactions. Even when it comes to Africa, the optimal population trajectory is unclear
- redtriumph 4y agoThis is a year old article. Should have (2021) in title. https://archive.ph/uJL4j https://archive.ph/uJL4j
- dang 4y agoAdded. Thanks!
- lapama 4y agoEducate the girls.
- farseer 4y ago[flagged]
- gautamdivgi 4y agoAbsolutely!! And encourage them to take up a career.
- rusticpenn 4y agoIn my experience, more Indian girls/women ( as a %) are in STEM than in Western Europe or USA.
- mc32 4y agoThis is true for upper middle and so on. But the big numbers (of undereducated) are in the lower classes.
- yamtaddle 4y agoAFAIK this is the norm for countries that aren't so repressive as to deny women education or the (realistic) ability to have a career, but that do offer less overall opportunity or freedom (in practice, if not de jure) than your average liberal "western"-model country, and have middling per-capita GDP.
- dartharva 4y agoIndian students (and more importantly, their parents) are generally averse to non-STEM fields when it comes to education. Getting through engineering/medical colleges is literally a part of the default life cycle in the current generation of middle-class India.
- rirze 4y agowouldn't this decrease the fertility factor more? It also doesn't address existing economic issues with different society classes (e.g. Hindu vs Muslim)
- cute_boi 4y agoThey are already overpopulated, so no need to panic.
- praveen9920 4y agoHere's the ground reality of "Surveys" and "Census" in India, The numbers are different from actual by a huge factor. There are multiple cultural and economical reasons for this, especially in villages. My mom used to do census work in some of the villages in India, where people would give out questionable and unverifiable details based on benefits offered by the Govt. For example, a kid is reported to be staying with grandparents ( which is very common ) and also with the parents ( in a different village). Both of them avail benefits from Govt for the kid. India has no infrastructure to verify the validity of the data even with Aadhaar. It is a common occurrence to find people with multiple Aadhar or Voter cards. So, the surveys do not give an accurate picture of India. Edit: Typos
- curiousllama 4y agoAre they consistently biased one way? Multiple Aadhar would seem to bias down, while the double-child would bias up. The first censuses in the US were basically "a dude rides into town, asks how many people live there, then leaves" and got surprisingly close to recent estimates. I just wonder if this is a matter of "there's error everywhere, it's basically stochastic, the # is close enough"
- praveen9920 4y agoIndia is a vast country with different cultures and states with varied benefits, so it is hard to say which way the bias is. The only thing I can say is they are not accurate.
- bhaak 4y agoThat's the super power of statistics though. Getting accurate enough numbers from unreliable sources.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoGarbage in, garbage out. Incomplete data might be usable if the underlying distribution is the same, and there is reason to assume it is the same. But that does not help if the data is bad in the first place.
- kibwen 4y agoI'm hopeful that humanity might actually be capable of outgrowing the virus mentality of self-destructive perpetual growth. Obviously that doesn't mean you need to root for outright human extinction, only the ability to reach a sustainable plateau.
- allemagne 4y agoThe "virus mentality" of having more than 2 kids and then providing them with a more comfortable life than you had?
- mcculley 4y agoIt is not clear to me at all that sustainability requires a plateau. Technological, infrastructural, agricultural, and industrial improvements should continually increase the carrying capacity of the planet. An Earth with billions more humans could have enormous benefits for those living on it.
- captn3m0 4y agoHere is the actual report: https://main.mohfw.gov.in/sites/default/files/NFHS-5_Phase-II_0.pdf https://main.mohfw.gov.in/sites/default/files/NFHS-5_Phase-I...
- einpoklum 4y agoPopulation shrinkage? Great. I just hope people in this country (= Israel/Palestine) learn a lesson and stop trying one-upping the other side, or other family members/friends, in having more children.
- satvikpendem 4y agoThe northeast of India still has a population replacement level above 2.1, due to highly fertile land there. So at least in that area, the population is still growing while the rest is shrinking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM-OI7HcCeU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM-OI7HcCeU