What it means for India to overtake China as the world’s most populous country – BBC News 中文

China’s population growth rate decreased by about half from 2% in 1973 to 1.1% in 1983.

Demographers point out that this is largely achieved through the abuse of human rights. Two campaigns, one in favor of having only one child and the other in favor of later marriage, with a larger age gap between children and fewer children.

For most of the second half of the last century, India’s population grew rapidly, at nearly 2% a year. Over time, death rates decrease, life expectancy increases, and incomes increase. More and more people, especially city dwellers, have access to clean drinking water and modern sewage systems. “But the birth rate is still high,” said Tim Dyson, a demographer at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

India started its family planning program in 1952 and didn’t formulate its first national population policy until 1976, when China was busy reducing the birth rate.

But in India, during a state of emergency in 1975 (during which civil liberties were suspended), an overly aggressive family planning program forced millions of poor people to be sterilized, provoking a social backlash against family planning. “If the state of emergency hadn’t happened, if politicians had been more aggressive, India’s fertility rate would have fallen faster. It also means that all successive governments have played it safe with family planning,” he said Dyson.

East Asian countries like South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan and Thailand started their population programs much later than India, but they have had lower fertility rates, lower infant and maternal mortality rates, higher incomes higher levels and better human development ahead of India.

India’s population has grown by more than 1 billion since independence in 1947 and its population is projected to grow for another 40 years. But the country’s population growth rate has been declining for decades, failing to deliver dire predictions of a “demographic catastrophe.”

So whether India has a larger population than China is no longer a major “worrying” issue, demographers say.

Rising incomes and better access to health and education have meant that Indian women are having fewer children, effectively flattening the growth curve. In 17 of the 22 states and territories, the fertility rate is already below replacement level: two children per woman. (The replacement level refers to the level at which the number of newborns can maintain a stable population.)

Birth rates are declining faster in southern India than in the more populous north. “Unfortunately, more parts of India are unlikely to be like southern India,” Dyson said. “If all else is equal, rapid population growth in parts of northern India has depressed living standards.” .

For example, it could strengthen India’s bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. The United Nations Security Council has five permanent members, including China.

India is a founding member of the United Nations and has always maintained that its calls for a permanent seat were justified. “I think (as the most populous country) you have certain rights,” said John Wilmoth, head of the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

How India’s population changes is also important, says KS James of the International Institute for Population Sciences in Mumbai.

For all its shortcomings, James said India deserves credit for achieving a “healthy demographic transition” through family planning in a democracy that was both impoverished and generally undereducated. “Most countries did this after literacy rates and living standards rose.”

There is more good news. One fifth of the world’s population under 25 comes from India and 47% of Indians are under 25. Two thirds of Indians were born after India’s economic liberalization in the early 1990s. Economist Shruti Rajagopalan points out in a new article that this group of young Indians has some unique characteristics. “This generation of Indian youth will be the largest consumer and employer in the online knowledge and commodity economy. Indians will be the largest talent pool in the world.”

India needs to create enough jobs for its young working-age population to reap the demographic dividend. But only 40 percent of India’s working-age population is working or wanting to work, according to the Center for Indian Economy Monitoring.

More women need to work because they have less time to give birth and care for working-age children. This part of the picture is even more bleak. Just 10 percent of working-age women were working in October, compared to 69 percent in China, according to India’s Center for Economic Monitoring.

Then there is the immigration issue. About 200 million Indians move between the states and territories of the country and their numbers are expected to grow. Most are workers who have left the countryside to seek work in the cities. “Due to lack of jobs and low wages in the countryside, our cities will grow as immigration increases. Can they provide a fair standard of living for immigrants? Otherwise we will end up with more slums and disease,” he said Kerala, India. S Irudaya Rajan, an immigration expert at the International Institute of Migration and Development in the state.

Demographers say India must also end child marriage, prevent child marriage, and properly record births and deaths. An imbalance in the sex ratio at birth, meaning more boys are born than girls, remains a concern. The political rhetoric about “population control” appears to be targeting the country’s largest minority, Muslims, when in fact “the birth gap is widespread among religious groups in India,” according to a Pew Research Center study. to be.”

Demographers say aging in India has received little attention.

In 1947, the median age in India was 21. Only 5% of people over the age of 60. Today the average age exceeds 28 and more than 10% of Indians are over 60 years old. Southern states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu reached replacement levels at least 20 years ago.

Rukmini S, author of Full Numbers and Half-Truths: What Data Can and Can’t Tell Us About Modern India: “As the working-age population shrinks, support for the elderly will become an increasing burden on government resources.”

“Family structures will have to be reshaped and older adults living alone will become a growing concern,” he said.