India Will Be Most Populous Country Sooner Than Thought, U.N. Says

[Bosonic]

Source: New York Times

Demographers have known for some time that the number of people in India would surpass the number in China, the two most populous countries in the world. But they did not anticipate that the change would happen so quickly.

The United Nations reported on Wednesday that India’s population will probably surpass China’s by 2022, not 2028, as the organization had forecast just two years ago.

In its 2015 revision report, the population division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs said China’s population was now 1.38 billion, compared with 1.31 billion in India. But in seven years, the populations of both are expected to reach 1.4 billion.

Thereafter, the report said, India’s population will grow for decades, to 1.5 billion in 2030 and 1.7 billion in 2050, while China’s is expected to remain fairly constant until the 2030s, when it is expected to slightly decrease.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/30/world/asia/india-will-be-most-populous-country-sooner-than-thought-un-says.html

[Hello Dragon]

1. China has restrictions

On the number of offspring.

[Gregorian]

2. And the mere mention of regulating breeding is met with jeers and rage.

Hey, it's their kids who have to live in the beautiful human cesspool of their making. I wonder what the world will be like with 9 billion. Probably not very nice.

[Fred Sanders]

3. Jeers and some rage is well deserved for everyone who merely mentions "other" human beings are "breeding".

[snooper2]

4. I'd be willing to guess 40 or 50 million humans are breeding right now!

maybe 100 million?

[Gregorian]

5. Far less insulting than the results

[smirkymonkey]

10. Personally, I think everyone should stop breeding.

But, hey. That's just me. We need a few generations of people just laying off for a while.

[PasadenaTrudy]

31. +1,000! n/t

[PasadenaTrudy]

32. Sorry, but that's what it is

Breeding. Humans are animals, especially when it comes to procreating. We don't deserve to take up any more space than say...rabbits.

[Recursion]

39. India's birth rate has been falling for 30 years

The population is growing because infectious diseases are being prevented and childhood nutrition has improved.

[cosmicone]

6. It is actually not as bad as it sounds

Both economies are dependent upon cheap labor.

China's population is aging rapidly and is "top heavy" with too many seniors being supported by fewer and fewer youth. It will take away China's manufacturing edge whilst India, with 55% of its population under 25, will become the manufacturing powerhouse.

What is not commonly known in the West is that India's birth rate has continued to decline. The increase in population is because improvements in health care has resulted in people living a lot longer and the death rate has declined much more than the decline in the birth rate.

[NickB79]

7. And that will only amplify climate change and global destruction

1.5 BILLION Indians, all working to become middle-class citizens, consuming resources like Americans.

Hello catastrophic climate change.

[cosmicone]

8. So .. you don't want them to live a comfortable life? n/t

[The2ndWheel]

11. This is the conversation stopper

And part of the reason why our environmental issues will get more complex. Who gets to tell other people that they can't live a comfortable life?

That's maybe a major reason why environmental issues are way, way, way down on lists of what people think are important. We don't do well with limits.

[Nihil]

14. The choice is "breed like rabbits" or "live a comfortable life" - not "Both of the above".

1.5 billion here, 1.5 billion there, yet "cultural sensitivity" is supposed
to take precedence over the truth.

FTS.

[The2ndWheel]

15. That's where our species is at this point

We are very successful. So successful, that we embody both predator and prey at their heights. There are usually fewer predators, because they consume so much of the prey, so that they don't all die when they eat. There are usually more prey, because there is strength in numbers, so if a few get caught and killed, the species doesn't die out.

The bigger the form of life, most likely there are fewer of them in number in relation to the smaller forms of life, which are most likely far more numerous. Again, a balance. The bigger you are, the more resources you require. The smaller you are, the more of you are needed.

Human beings do both. There are a lot of us, so we consume a lot. We consume a lot, so there are a lot of us. There is no counter balance to us. Outside of a virus of some sort, but even then, we attempt to eradicate anything like that. Even ourselves, through mechanisms like war, would be a counter balance, but we do that less than we used to as well.

So it's always growth. Even if we had fewer people physically on the planet one year after the next, which we don't yet, no matter what the birth rates are, we would only be doing that by increasing our resource use in order to give people more choices in life.

Short term will always beat out long term. It's save as many people as you can today, and try and deal with whatever happens. The Green Revolution has helped who knows how many people, and now they all need jobs, which will require more resources.

That's where we are, and that's what we do. We can't stop, but we can't continue.

[cosmicone]

17. You are creating a false dichotomy and also a wrong assertion.

India's population growth is because of a faster decline in death rates rather than any increase in the birth rate.

Secondly, one CAN have a population growth AND improved standard of living. The baby boomer generation in the US proved that.

My frequent trips to India and China are proving that as well. People are living better than the old days. Most have mobile phones, every corner has a mall full of consumer goods and people are buying. There are increases in real income and thus disposable income. Go anywhere in the world and you'll see that tourist spots are now increasingly have a plurality of Indian and Chinese tourists where one would exclusively see Americans and Brits before with a few Japanese.

No point in constantly harping upon Sinophobia and Indophobia.

[NickB79]

33. No, you are covering your eyes to the damage climate change is already doing, and will do

one CAN have a population growth AND improved standard of living. The baby boomer generation in the US proved that.

And today, in part because of that economic and population boom that set us on our current path, we're at 400 ppm of CO2 and rising. We're rapidly closing in on, if not already passed, the point of no return with regard to climate change. The improvements we see in the short term are fleeting and limited entirely to our own species, while the damage done to the ecosystem will last for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years.

James Hansen, one of the leading climatologists of our era, recently stated that we could likely see several METERS of sea level rise this century alone: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/07/27/3684564/james-hansen-climate-danger-hyper-anthropocene/

Geological records indicate that the last time CO2 levels were this high several MILLION years ago, sea levels were 50-100 FEET higher than today. We're even started a mass extinction event comparable to the one that ended the dinosaurs: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/06/22/the-earth-is-on-the-brink-of-a-sixth-mass-extinction-scientists-say-and-its-humans-fault/

But please, tell us again how this pales in comparison to the wonders of disposable income buying cell phones in shopping malls, and how wonderful the tourist destinations are.

[cosmicone]

35. I am not denying that increased population causes pollution

But, even today, United States and Western Europe are responsible for most of the greenhouse gases. It is easy to preach to others to remain impoverished while we continue to drive SUVs, have three cars in each family and oppose public transportation.

Your anger should be directed at us and not the poor masses in the third world who are trying to get basic electronics and appliances.

[Sunlei]

19. people considered 'middle class' in most other countries don't consume resources like Americans.

especially unnecessary resources like wall to wall carpet, lawn care products, stuff like that.

[6chars]

27. unnecessary resources?

"wall to wall carpet" unnecessary? next you'll be telling me to wear white after labor day. sheesh

[Sunlei]

28. IMO, its a silly waste of money and a health hazard to boot. go ahead its your money & house air,

Wall to wall carpet does create a lot of jobs for people.

[6chars]

29. carpet can be recycled

a good idea.

this article describes that and some other interesting ideas.

http://www.mnn.com/your-home/at-home/stories/buying-eco-friendly-carpet

[Sunlei]

30. It's ok with me, enjoy the wall to wall.

[Recursion]

40. So we'll keep our middle class lifestyle while 4 billion Asians don't get to have one?

Good luck with that.

[JCMach1]

9. Not to mention gender disparity caused by ultrasounds and abortions...

[cosmicone]

12. ummm ... gender disparity is localized to certain sub-communities

It is not an all-encompassing phenomenon.

"Indian Census has the tradition of bringing out disaggregated information by sex on various aspects of population. The first and foremost component of gender statistics revealed by Census 2001, 532 million constituting 52 percent are males and 497 million constituting remaining 48 percent are females in the population."

" It is commonly understood that males and females in the population balance each other in number. Little do they know sexes are imbalanced in different population across the worlds .According to United Nation estimates, the world had 986 females against 1000 males in 2000. Except Indonesia and Japan, all other Asian countries have low sex ratios."

Source: http://censusindia.gov.in/Census_And_You/gender_composition.aspx (2010 Census)

Also, the younger the population, the more males it has and the older the population, the more females it has. Since India's population is very young, the numbers get skewed to favor males.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio

Next time, write an informed opinion instead of simply parroting tabloid style headlines.

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. No, it really is because of sex selection for births

The figures (ignore the Wikipedia ones - someone went in there to vandalisse the India figures):
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2018.html

At birth, the top male/female ratios are:
Liechtenstein at birth: 1.26
China at birth: 1.15
Curacao at birth: 1.15
Armenia at birth: 1.13
Hong Kong at birth: 1.12
India at birth: 1.12
Azerbaijan at birth: 1.11
Vietnam at birth: 1.11
Grenada at birth: 1.1
San Marino at birth: 1.1
Albania at birth: 1.1

World at birth: 1.07

The small countries may be getting a bit of random variation from very small birth rates. But China, India and Vietnam have high rates due to real sex selection. When you consider that China and India are a significant part of the world's population, the average for the world excluding those 2 countries will be about 1.03. The birth rate for boys in those 2 countries is about 10% more than natural.

[cosmicone]

16. Where are you getting the 10% from?

In a study around 2002, the natural sex ratio at birth was estimated to be close to 1.06 males/female. (Grech, V; Savona-Ventura, C; Vassallo-Agius, P (2002). "Unexplained differences in sex ratios at birth in Europe and North America". BMJ (Clinical research ed.) (BMJ, NCBI/National Institutes of Health) 324 (7344): 1010–1))

In the United States, the sex ratios at birth over the period 1970–2002 were 1.05 for the white non-Hispanic population, 1.04 for Mexican Americans, 1.03 for African Americans and Indians, and 1.07 for mothers of Chinese or Filipino ethnicity. (Matthews TJ et al. (June 2005). "Trend Analysis of the Sex Ratio at Birth in the United States". National Vital Statistics Reports 53 (20).)

Among Western European countries ca. 2001, the ratios ranged from 1.04 in Belgium to 1.07 in Switzerland, Italy, Ireland and Portugal.

So assuming that the average should be 1.03 is fallacious.

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. It's a rough estimate from weighting the Chinese and Indian populations against the world

Since they make up about 35% of the world, I looked for a number that would balance the 1.12 and 1.15 of India and China, to produce a 1.07 overall world figure.

To be more accurate, I've taken the total population and birth rate figures for all countries, and found out the actual numbers born per year in each country. Since China's birthrate is lower than the world average, this does bring the numbers down a bit - China has 12.3% of world births, and India 18.3%.

Using those figures, the ratio for the rest of the world works out at about 1.045. That makes the Chinese ratio of 1.15 about 10% excess boys, and India's 1.12 7% excess boys.

[JCMach1]

21. Those studies are relatively out of date... technology saturation and price

is a recent development. This article discusses a 2011 study in The Lancet.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/8533467/Indian-gender-gap-widens-due-to-number-of-female-foetus-abortions.html

India now has seven million fewer girls than boys under six, according to a study published yesterday in The Lancet.
Researchers found wealthier women with higher levels of education were more likely to abort girls because they could afford to pay for gender tests and abortions.
Their report has exposed a 1996 law which banned gender screening tests in an attempt to reduce female feticides as a failure...

[cosmicone]

22. 7 million fewer girls under age 6 is normative

There are always more boys than girls in the younger population and more females than males in the aging population.

It is also a Western media bias to exaggerate practices that are not very common and isolated to make up and coming countries feel bad about themselves. It has the "Look, we White people do it much better than you POC" kind of arrogance.

[JCMach1]

23. Nothing of the kind... India is a relatively fundamentalist (Hindu and also Muslim) society

where male children are considered your retirement plan.

It is not 'Western' bias to take a look at how fundamentalist and social practice in a patriarchal society serve to first foeticide and then proceed to disenfranchise female lives.

[cosmicone]

24. Keep harping

By that logic, the US is a country of murderers since there is a murder in the news every day.

India has had women prime ministers and presidents, the leader of the opposition is a female. Tell me how many women have been Senate Majority Leaders? How many women presidents has the US had? Crickets?

[JCMach1]

36. You are showing how ignorant you are of India...

and how insulting you can be...

Sorry, but you are dead wrong.

[cosmicone]

37. hahahahahahahahahahahahaha

I am ignorant of India?

I was born and reared there and go there every 2 months.

[Sunlei]

18. any country thats willing to have part of their pop cook with kerosene, eat just enough to survive..

offer no free birth control, will quickly increase in population to fill the void.

[cosmicone]

25. India has had free birth control since 1966 n/t

[Sunlei]

26. They have free birth control in India. Thanks, I didn't know that. Wish the USA was as progressive.

[olddad56]

34. wow, even with so many people from India in this country on work visas. That is amazing.

[Recursion]

38. The views of India being revealed in these comments trouble me (nt)