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Earth

India Defuses Its Population Bomb (science.org) 156

The world's second most populous nation uses sterilization, contraceptives to reach fertility milestone. From a report: Back in the 1960s, India faced an exploding population, with a fertility rate of nearly six children per woman. When famine struck, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson initially refused to deliver food aid, citing the country's high birth rate. In response, India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi dramatically expanded the first national family planning program in a major developing country, offering cash incentives for both men and women to be sterilized. The city of Madras, now called Chennai, paid men $6 a snip. For the next 60 years, India continued to focus on sterilization as well as contraceptives and education for girls. Now, Indian health officials say the task of defusing their population bomb is finally done. Late last month, the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), a periodic investigation of half a million households, announced a milestone: The country's fertility rate had for the first time fallen below the widely accepted "replacement level" of 2.1 children per woman. (The U.S. rate is 1.8.) "Women are seeing the wisdom in having fewer children," says Poonam Muttreja, director of the nonprofit Population Foundation of India.

India's population growth is not over yet, however. Thanks to past high fertility rates, two-thirds of the population is under 35 years old, and a large cohort of people is now entering childbearing age. Even at replacement fertility rates, the children of these young people will continue to push up numbers, and India may exceed China as the world's most populous nation as early as next year. Still, India's population is set to decline in about 3 decades, putting the country on the same track as a growing number of developing nations, such as its neighbor Bangladesh and Indonesia. India remains well behind China in falling fertility. In China, where the population may be at its peak, official figures put the fertility rate at 1.7 children per woman. State-sponsored family planning remains "the single most important driver" of India's drop in fertility, says Srinivas Goli, a demographer at Jawaharlal Nehru University. More than 55% of couples use modern contraceptives, the latest NFHS survey found. Of these, one-fifth use condoms and one-tenth the pill. But sterilization of women, generally in government-run clinics, accounts for two-thirds of all contraception. Sterilization has a checkered past in India. During the mid-1970s, Gandhi allowed states to operate compulsory sterilization camps. An estimated 19 million people were sterilized, three-quarters of them men. The program's unpopularity helped bring down Gandhi's government in 1977, says Monica Das Gupta of the Maryland Population Research Center.

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India Defuses Its Population Bomb

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  • by AndyKron ( 937105 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @01:44PM (#62087237)
    This is our only hope of slowing down climate change, food shortages, water shortages, and [list favorite resource here] shortages.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 )
      Extinction! Rebellion! The best way to rebel is to have one child. Remember, the capitalists want perpetual growth at the cost of the environment. Don't give them what they want.
    • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @02:33PM (#62087479)
      It's not built for this. We have a very particular type of capitalism that is designed to only function in the presence of rapid and infinite growth. We need a large number of children to function as new workers and earn money in order to keep the average consumer fed and clothed. Well it's true that automation and productivity increases mean that we have more than enough resources to go around even with a much larger population we don't have the social structures in place to distribute that largesse. There is substantial resistance to any change in how our form of capitalism functions because for the longest Time we had to be firing on all cylinders. Also existing power structures depend heavily on the threat of starvation in order to keep us in line.
      • We will need wealth redistribution to prevent retirees from falling into grinding poverty and dying in the streets. Retirement as we know it has been working as a long-running intergenerational ponzi scheme instead of an actual sustainable savings scheme. With the current system the jig is up when the population hits ecological limits or when the system impoverishes one or more generations too hard (as is currently happening with Millennials/GenZ).

        • We will need wealth redistribution to prevent retirees from falling into grinding poverty and dying in the streets.

          I don't know who "we" is. Maybe you're still talking about India.
          Here in the US, retirees as a group have much more accumulated wealth than workers. Sure, it's a statistical distribution, but retirees aren't where you can redistribute wealth to.

          • For now, sure, boomers have healthy retirement funds, but when GenX retires things won't look so healthy, and if GenY were to retire with affairs on their current trajectory, you could have retirees dying in the streets. The same problem exists in most countries around the world. You also wouldn't necessarily need to redistribute wealth to retirees, you could redistribute it to workers through incomes so that they can save for retirement on their own before the shit hits the fan.

            • by ghoul ( 157158 )
              Most boomer wealth will transfer to younger generations via expensive end of life care.
              • Unless those younger generations are all self-employed hospice care providers, they'll only get a sliver of that wealth while most goes upper management and above in the healthcare sector.

            • It's that when our economy stops growing it's going to collapse. That's why every time you turn on the news they're always talking about economic growth forecasts. The design of it requires constant growth. Without that spending slows, businesses pull back unemployment and investment, and you enter a deflationary spiral.

              The problem with that is that about 90% of the wealth goes to the top 10%. This means that in order for the bottom 90 to be functional you need the economy to remain strong.

              If the ec
              • Investment is the only part that requires never-ending growth, an economy without investment would happily hum along in a zero-growth scenario, and even contraction would only be as much of an issue as slowing growth is today. The desire to make money by owning instead of working is the central problem. An economy without investment would be totally alien to anything we've seen before but it could be possible.

              • The malaise economy of Japan is pretty much what will happen I think. Their interest rates have been about 0 for over 20 years now. https://tradingeconomics.com/j... [tradingeconomics.com]
            • Gen-Xers are not going to retire like our parents did. We are either wealthy enough to not be reliant on social security, or we are planning to work until we die.

        • But pretty much everyone. If all economic output is determined by having a large number of young hardworking people and you don't then economic output collapses. As that happens there's a real risk of entering a deflationary spiral that leads to massive unemployment.
          • If all economic output is determined by having a large number of young hardworking people and you don't then economic output collapses.

            In the past, you have advocated UBI because there won't be enough jobs for workers.

            Now you are claiming that there won't be enough workers for the jobs.

            As that happens there's a real risk of entering a deflationary spiral that leads to massive unemployment.

            I see. So the shortage of workers will lead to the workers losing their jobs. So we will simultaneously have not enough workers and too many. Sure. Whatever.

            • I can't blame you for not understanding how/why, it's counterintuitive.

              There's 2 different forces at play here:

              a. total # of jobs

              b. total # of employees providing economic output.

              Emphasis added on the important part.

              Automation & process improvement will continue to eat away at jobs, as it has for over 40 years [businessinsider.com].

              But at the same time fewer productive or high productive citizens means less overall economic output, meaning a smaller pie to divvy up [youtube.com].

              These are two separate processes.
          • Maybe that used to be true, but modern economies are highly automated and skill drives productivity in many fields. The young fresh out of school workers may work a bit harder just because of their youth or lack of family commitments, but most of them don't have the experience that allows them to be as productive as someone with far more experience.
        • by ghoul ( 157158 )
          We should switch to an economic system where prices are set as %age of net worth instead of a flat rate. So coffee price could be set as 0.1%. So if your net worth is a 1000 (poor college student) you get charged 1 dollar. Your net worth is 10000 you get charged 10 dollar and if you are Elon you get charged 300 million dollar for the same cup of coffee.
      • You are right, but we still need to change it.

        Eternally increasing growth rates are not sustainable -or survivable.

    • Far from our only hope, it's only just slightly helpful. Remember that the world mostly got itself into this mess with about half of its current population, we need to look at total CO2 emissions and per-capital food and water availability, which are completely divorced from population numbers now.

      Population reductions can also create challenges with a highly aged population, ask Japan.

      See also: https://www.wired.com/story/op... [wired.com]

      • by Subm ( 79417 )

        > Far from our only hope, it's only just slightly helpful.

        On the contrary, it's necessary, just not sufficient.

        Your evidence that we got into this mess with half our population suggests that half our population is already overpopulated, at least for that rate of consumption. Plenty of research agrees.

    • Yes, sterilizing the lower castes for which $6 is life or death while the higher castes can procreate.
      What's not to like, really.

    • >This is our only hope of slowing down climate change, food shortages, water shortages, and [list favorite resource here] shortages.

      Nonsense, there's lots of options.

      A nice big WWIII would solve things nicely - none of those little sandbox fights like WWI and II. Once the first global nuclear volley is done with the *real* fighting over the remaining scraps can begin.
      So would a truly devastating plague. Maybe we'll get lucky and Omicron or some later mild and contagious variant will turn out to have lo

  • by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @01:44PM (#62087239) Homepage

    I was under the impression that the health of our economies are largely dependent on increasing populations; is that not the case?

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @01:59PM (#62087319) Journal

      > under the impression that the health of our economies are largely dependent on increasing populations

      It's not so much the economies themselves that depend on it, but rather gov't and political budgeting. You can run up more debt if you believe the future population will be larger because that shrinks the relative size of debt. If not, you're hosed. Many of the politicians handing out lucrative benefits & retirements will likely not be in office when bleep hits the fan. It's one reason why I am against term-limits: you want politicians to think and care about what happens 20 or so years down the road rather than hand out hit-and-run goodies.

      • It's not so much the economies themselves that depend on it, but rather gov't and political budgeting.

        No, it's the economy, fundamentally. Any society with a bunch of consumers and a few producers is going to have a very tough time, regardless of how the books are juggled.

        • by ghoul ( 157158 )
          The ultimate aim is to have 100% consumers with all production done by machines.
          • I guess so, but between here and there is a fundamental re-working of how wealth is distributed, and also people meet the psychological needs like belonging to a tribe that needs them, and proving how special and important they are (not least to themselves).
            • by ghoul ( 157158 )
              Have the state own the machines and issues shares in the state owned corportation to all citizens. Kuwait does this with the Kuwait Oil Co. Every Kuwaiti gets enough in dividends to not have to work. They can work if it interests them. When all wealth is being created via machines the state will have to do something similar. People could live off their dividends. They would pursue interests which interest them rather than have to work for money. This is what slave owning societies used to do so its nothing
    • Well then, I guess we'll have to accept a lower standard of living for the sake of Earth continuing to be a hospitable place for humankind. Remember, we can do a lot with automation. Eldercare robot go blooop-bleeep!
      • Well then, I guess we'll have to accept a lower standard of living for the sake of Earth continuing to be a hospitable place for humankind.

        Cool, as long as you wait till I'm done with it.

        :)

      • Well then, I guess we'll have to accept a lower standard of living for the sake of Earth

        No, we don't. Forget about economic theory and look at reality:

        Here are the three countries with the highest fertility (BPW), along with per capita GDP:
        Niger 6.824, $633
        Somalia 5.978, $347
        DR Congo 5.819, $588

        Here are the 3 countries with the lowest:
        Singapore 1.1, $64,103
        Taiwan 1.0, $32,787
        Korea 0.8, $34,866

        Low population growth does not lead to poverty.

    • It's complicated. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Brain-Fu ( 1274756 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @02:03PM (#62087343) Homepage Journal

      On the one hand, yes, many aspects of the economy depend on constant population growth, and so population shrinkage causes all kinds of economic fallout. Japan is dealing with such problems right not, in fact.

      On the other hand, overpopulation causes a host of problems of its own, including environmental problems.

      So, the solution to either of these problems tends to be the cause of he other. Finding the exact right balance is tricky, to say the least.

      • True. The current economic system is based on perpetual growth. Figuring out what a steady state economy will look like has not really been explored. That last steady state economy was when, before the Reformation? Late Dark Ages? Some dynasty in China?

    • by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @02:05PM (#62087349) Journal

      The national economy is of course just the sum of all the families. In general a person doesn't need their family to get bigger in order to pay their bills and be financially comfortable.

      There ARE some countries that have put themselves in a bad position, though. While Ireland, China, Iran, Switzerland, and Zambia put about half of their money into savings, the trend in some countries is to get deep into debt. In Switzerland or Netherlands, you work, you save, you stop working and live off your savings.

      In dumber, more self-centered countries, people go deep into debt and are relying on their kids to support them when they are older. That's when not having kids is a problem - when you aren't saving anything because you're planning to sponge off your kids.

      • by XanC ( 644172 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @02:12PM (#62087381)

        There's little difference between your two scenarios at the macro level, unless people are saving food and water. In both cases, the retired folks require younger folks to be productive in order to eat.

        An extreme thought experiment: Suppose I had saved one million dollars, but at the time I retire there's only one farmer actually working the land. It doesn't matter how many dollars I have, there's only so much food to go around.

        • by tragedy ( 27079 )

          That kind of depends on how much land that one farmer is farming, how productive it is, how many other people there are, and how much money the other people have. Also, I know it's a thought experiment, but it really only works if there are additional constraints preventing supply of food from being elastic. Was there a disaster that left an intact population but only enough land and resources to farm a tiny patch (I mean, that's sort of happening at a slow pace in real life, but we need to be specific for

          • by XanC ( 644172 )

            You're missing the bigger point, which is that regardless of what the financial savings situation is, an older retired generation relies on the productivity of the younger generations. Whether that's accounted for by savings or some other mechanism doesn't change the basic fact.

            • by tragedy ( 27079 )

              You're missing the bigger point, which is that regardless of what the financial savings situation is, an older retired generation relies on the productivity of the younger generations.

              I was specifically addressing the thought experiment, not the general point. I did actually address it regardless when I wrote: "That kind of depends on how much land that one farmer is farming, how productive it is, how many other people there are..." I mean agriculture is basically _the_ example of of a massive shift in the required ratio of craft/service people to customers in history. The world went from virtually everyone working in agriculture to just a few percent working in agriculture and, bit by b

        • The main thing changed by whichever accounting scheme is used (e.g. 'savings'=paper IOU's, vs. an informal inter-generational social contract where old people live with their descendants) is the distribution of wealth. In the US, a great many IOU's have been issued, in the forms of home prices, stock returns, and the promise of social security. If the next generations honor these IOU's, they may be quite poor as much of the wealth flows upwards. If they repudiate the system (probably fractionally, e.g.
        • You don't need an ever-increasing amount of farmers to feed the same number of people. In fact, as things get more efficient, you need FEWER workers to produce the same goods.

          You only need MORE people if they are both supporting themselves AND paying off the debt their parents' handed them.

          • by XanC ( 644172 )

            I never said you needed more. Just pointing out a flaw in your analysis.

            In your new scenario, to whom do they owe this debt that was handed to them?

            • > In your new scenario, to whom do they owe this debt that was handed to them?

              Japan and China, mostly. That, and those countries own the companies that the USians work for, so the US citizens are literally working for China and Japan. Because they Japanese save and invest - buying factories and things in the US. The Americans don't save, so they quite literally work for the Japanese.

              There are 120 million households in the US. Just in federal government debt alone, those 120 million household owe Japan

              • by XanC ( 644172 )

                I thought we were speaking more generally, about the earth as a whole, in terms of older generations and younger generations.

                Federal government debt, denominated in our own currency, is not something that needs to be repaid. But that's another topic.

                • Ah, so you didn't read the subject line "only irresponsible nations", or the post, before replying. Gotcha.

              • > In your new scenario, to whom do they owe this debt that was handed to them?

                Japan and China, mostly. That, and those countries own the companies that the USians work for, so the US citizens are literally working for China and Japan.

                Only 28% of U.S. Federal debt is held by any foreign country. Japan and China together hold 10.5% so that debt is mostly owed to the U.S. itself, and those big lenders Japan and China are together only a small part of the picture.

                U.S foreign direct investment in China is larger than the Chinese investment in the U.S. Maybe the U.S. actually has China working for it?

                This is all scaremongering with a negligible supply of facts.

        • It's true that if a generation stuffed their mattresses full of cash, that wouldn't work so well. That's not what happens.

          first let's look at your dumbed-down farmer example, then we can broaden it to better reflect reality.

          In country C, a generation starts out working on the farm. They save half their wages and buy the farm. They own the combine, the fences, the barn, and the other agricultural buildings. They pass those things along to the next generation. It's a lot easier to do well for the generation

          • by XanC ( 644172 )

            You still need people to run these factories and actually make things. I'll say it again: an older retired generation relies on the productivity of the younger generation, regardless of the financial mechanisms involved.

            • > n older retired generation relies on the productivity of the younger generation

              Do you think they can produce and have more if:

              A) They own a factory full of modern machinery and use that to produce goods

              B) The work on an assembly line at a factory owned by a foreign company, such as Toyota or GE?

              After having been around a while, both working at at owning a number of companies, it's been my experience that owning a factory full of modern equipment is better than working the assembly line at factory someo

      • Savings create a glut of investment money looking for something to invest in. That is how market bubbles happen. Like Evergrande.

        Savings without worthy investment vehicles deserving investment leads to problems. Capital markets should do the allocations right, but when governments interfere with "too big to fail" "too big to jail" policies, or use it for geopolitics, problem for everyone

        • A SUDDEN INCREASE in saving due to fear about the future does indeed create a "glut" of available investment dollars that the markets aren't ready to use.

          I don't think you want to argue that countries with high savings rates over the last 50 years, such as Japan, Singapore and China, have seen their economies get much WORSE in the last few decades. Nor that countries with low savings rates, like Somalia, El Salvador, and Kosovo are booming.

          • The converse is definitely not true, as your example shows. Low savings rate is not the recipe for great progress.

            Savings, loans, consumption etc have an adverse effect above a certain level.

            Easily explained for loans. If I borrow 1000$ is my responsibility to pay to back. If I borrow 100 billion dollars, it is the lender's problem to collect the money back. Right?

            If a country consumes more than it exports, it is going to have trade deficit and lead all sorts of issues. But if it consumes more than half

    • by JBMcB ( 73720 )

      You want linear growth, not exponential growth. An average of one or two kids per family is fine. An average of four or five kids is not.

      • Note that a good general assumption is 2.1 kids per family for breakeven (yeah, some kids die before adulthood, hence the 0.1).

        Fewer kids than that, on average, means population shrinkage - which brings about its own problems...

        • Population shrinkage is a solution, not a problem.
          All of our actual ressource problems can be managed very well in a mildly shrinking population.
          Better to do it early, by soft means, than too late, by wars or climate-related massive starvations.

          Yeah, economist will have to re-think and eliminate growth ponzi schemes. And that is actually a very good thing.

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      It is not *the* case that an economy's health depends on population; it's *part of* the case. There are broadly speaking three ways to increase the wealth of a country: (1) put more labor to work; (2) attract more capital investment; and (3) use labor and capital more efficiently.

      This suggests there are ways to transition from a high-birthrate, low-wealth economy to a low-birthrate, high-wealth economy, initially leveraging the large underemployed population but eventually increasing the productivity of th

    • by ghoul ( 157158 )
      Its increasing output. Output can be increased by putting more people to work or via automation.
    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Not really. The richest countries in the world have populations that increase much more slowly than the poorest, and increase only because of immigration at that.

      Our economic system is based on increasing production and consumption, but people are generally happy to consume more, and we've gotten so good at producing things with fewer people that we actually have people whose job it is to get in the way.

      That dependence on increasing production will get us in trouble, but not because there aren't enough peop

  • by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @01:47PM (#62087249) Journal

    Easy access to birth control and porn.

    • by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @01:59PM (#62087321)
      And abortion. Yes. Abortion should be free and available to all without questions asked.
      • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        I avoided mentioning that because I don't want to trigger yet another red-vs-blue battle. Believe it or not, I do like to take breaks from triggering common politicos.

      • And abortion. Yes. Abortion should be free and available to all without questions asked.

        As a Conservative, I don't want to pay (via my taxes) so that others can have free, no questions asked induced abortions. You will find me arguing about optional abortions, but never would I propose a blanket ban. I believe optional abortions are morally wrong. I see how hard it would be to distinguish between spontaneous abortion (aka miscarriage) and induced abortion. I also fail to see how to empirically prove that an abortion was elective. I refuse to start a witch hunt every time a woman has a miscarri

    • Easy access to birth control and porn.

      The only thing you need to destroy your birthrate is to westernize. The rising standard of living will eventually make your young more worried about the next Xbox or iPhone than buying a house and having kids. And pretty soon, your family tree will be upside down.

      • by skam240 ( 789197 )

        It's not so much "westernize" as much as it's increased economic prosperity that does it but regardless that's easier said than done. Since colonialism has ended almost every former colony has been trying to create first world wealth and they've mostly failed to some degree or another.

        • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          On the contrary, virtually all of them are succeeding far more quickly than any of the "western" countries did.

    • India could do with better production values for the porn. Maybe their government could sponsor an X-Art spin off in Mumbai.
  • Their solution: send excess population to the US. Mainly to be CEOs of US (?) corporations.

  • Another way (Score:4, Informative)

    by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @01:53PM (#62087275) Journal
    Is for Indian women to kill themselves. Every 25 minutes an Indian housewife commits suicide [bbc.com] due to domestic violence as well as being forced into marriage and lack of personal freedoms.

    And this doesn't take into account the number of women murdered each day by men, sometimes after the [go.com] woman has [cnn.com] been raped [cnn.com].

    Kill off your women and you'll definitely get your population under control
    • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @03:40PM (#62087915)

      Is for Indian women to kill themselves. Every 25 minutes an Indian housewife commits suicide [bbc.com] due to domestic violence as well as being forced into marriage and lack of personal freedoms.

      While the social problems are real it is worth noting that the number isn't actually high. 1 every 25minutes sounds impressive, but it results in a suicide rate less than half of the American male, only marginally less than American in general and 1.7x that of American females.

      Number per unit of time doesn't make sense when comparing countries with different populations. The Indian female suicide rate is not actually alarming compared to suicide rates across the world. If anything it's alarming that it isn't higher given the social issues you mentioned.

      But then India does have a lower rate of rape than the USA (even corrected for estimates of unreported cases), and a lower level of homicide too.

    • Re:Another way (Score:5, Informative)

      by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @04:44PM (#62088221) Journal
      USA has a population 3 times fewer. The suicide rate is 132 per day. [wikipedia.org]. Men : women suicide ratio is 4 : 1. Thus 26 women / day, of slightly more than 1 per hour. Adjust for 3 times fewer population, American rate is the equivalent of one per 20 minute. It is actually higher in USA, adjusting for population. Even without population adjustment it is horribly high, 1 per hour. More importantly 4 men per hour.

      Would anyone care to speculate adjusting the stats for poverty and lack of education?

      In some sense, despite all that grinding abject poverty, lack of trust in the government, corrupt governance, division along caste, religion, language, India is doing well in social parameters. And it is a democracy. However badly its elections are run, the transfer of power has been smooth. No gang of fanatics of a losing party stormed its parliament voting of peaceful transfer of powers.

      So if Indians start lecturing USA on democracy or China teaching free market, "no one too big to fail in China" to USA, the correct response should be to show some humility.

    • Every 25 minutes an Indian housewife commits suicide [bbc.com] due to domestic violence as well as being forced into marriage and lack of personal freedoms.

      I don't know why you're focusing so much on gender for suicide in India. According to the latest stats I could find (2019), India had 14.7 male suicides versus 11.1 female suicides, per 100,000 people.

      Kill off your people and you'll definitely get your population under control

      FTFY.

    • Oh shut the fuck up. Indian men commit suicide at a far higher ratio. The typical western idea that dark men mistreat women is the only reason you hear this kind of shit in western media because it generates funding. Seriously go fuck yourself. Domestic violence laws are the most misused laws in India. There is no way you didn't know this.

  • by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @01:54PM (#62087279) Journal
    No country is really monolithic. Though the total fertility rate has fallen, it is not uniform across all religions, languages, social classes, castes, and regions.

    The most endangered demographics are the Parsis. One of the most successful, educated and affluent demographics of India. Tata family that started the India's first steel mill, that owns TATA group of companies, it owns some well known international brans like Jaguar, Land Rover, Lipton tea, belongs to that group. India's first Field Marashal Manekshaw was from that group. They are dying off. Their fertility rate is 0.6 per woman, with exogamous marriages with wealthy families of Europe and America, they are not expected to last into the next century.

    Traditionally well educated sub classes like brahmins too have low fertility rates.

    Traditionally wealthy merchant castes, land owning families descendant from royal and military blood lines (kshatriya castes) have slightly higher but still below replacement levels.

    The sub groups with higher than replacement rates are typically poor people spread across all religions and castes.

    India is a democracy, the poor and less educated people are getting the voting power, woed by politicians. Politicians find it easier to win elections by stoking the resentment and anger of one sub group against other group or against the "elites". So India is getting into very tricky situation due to population distribution shift and a democratic, but very corrupt government.

    • by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Thursday December 16, 2021 @02:13PM (#62087383)
      That's not really different from any country and there's a direct correlation between wealth and declining birth rate. When you aren't dirt poor and have some kind of retirement you don't need to rely on your children to care for you in your old age and when the infant mortality rate drops to modern levels you don't need to worry about your children surviving to adulthood.
      • The phenomena seems to be global. Wealthier a country gets, lower its birth rate becomes. More freedom and liberty enjoyed by people, less children they have.

        The current model of continuous growth based economic model will not be sustainable. How to manage a steady state or declining population is not known. And the capital markets seem to be clueless about it.

  • Economies based on infinite growth
  • I was under the impression that lots of children was a form of social security. They will care for the parents when they are old. Contraceptives don't solve that. This was on a documentary on tv a few years ago.
    • by schwit1 ( 797399 )

      Exactly. This is why the US needs immigration. The birth rate has dropped significantly since more US women entered the workforce plus the pill.

      Recruiting hard workers and people with needed job skills from other countries successfully fills that gap.

  • underpopulation is likely to be our species biggest problem. A buddy of mine wanted more kids. The wife vetoed it because she's the one that has to squeeze them out. Most women will stop at 1 or 2 (clown car jokes aside). And many men don't want any. Eventually the problems with male birth control will be worked out.

    What I'm wondering is what the folks at the top will do when their fodder starts running out. If you think the guys at the top haven't considered what a permanent labor shortage would mean t
    • If you think the guys at the top haven't considered what a permanent labor shortage would mean to the cost of labor, well, you don't know supply and demand.

      On the contrary, experience has taught me the guys at the top have zero concerns about anything beyond 2 years from now. They may claim to have a long-term plan, but the details are left to magic asterisks. Though they do have plenty of fans who insist otherwise.

  • A new low for slashdot...

  • I'm surprised no one has called out the implicit disparities that such programs create. Offering financial incentives for sterilization smacks of eugenics. Those who are wealthy are not nearly as incentivized by the payment as those in abject poverty. It would be interesting to see the data on who in India accepted the payments and their economic status. I'd suspect it skews heavily toward the poorest segment of the population.

    If we reframed this as paying poor people to get sterilized, would those comm
    • by ghoul ( 157158 )
      The rich anyway dont have too many kids. They have careers to think of. So it makes sense to focus efforts on the segment of society having 5-6kids rather the segment having 1-2 kids
  • ...birth rate, mortality, and average income was given by professor Hans Rosling [ted.com] some years ago (too bad he succumbed to cancer a few years ago). There are a few more presentations by him in TED archive, look for them because there is a lot to learn!
  • It's still been irresponsible to grow at this rate. In an area less than the EU, they have more than 3x people. With more limited agricultural and water resources. It's not OK to grow your country's population to 1bn+ in a physical world of limited resources.

    Still, much more responsible than what's happening in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, with the unhinged addition of extra billions of people during the next few decades.

  • I think this is the first positive article I've seen about controlling the population. Never mind that every single resource crisis we have (climate change, energy, water, housing, etc.) can be managed more easily if we would stop multiplying, but people have a lot of trouble setting aside their animal need to procreate as much as possible.

    No doubt the government's absolute dependence on continued growth plays in to the situation. Every version of "the massive deficit's not a big deal man!" relies on it.

  • We have too many idiots and amoral people but not enough people of good character. I feel like with increased population the higher the probability someone is born who can figure out how to solve mankinds hate. I dunno, maybe it would need large scale genetic editing instead of just education.

    Anyway, I do not see how population control can fix that. As long as there are people who cannot control their feelings of anger and hate humanity is in danger. After all, humans can be extinction level zeroed with jus

  • I studied this back in college, I'm sure they'd like to avoid going back to these kinds of methods. [bbc.com]

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