Population growth slows down in India
FALLING FERTILITY RATES FORCE ODISHA STATE TO REVIEW POLICIES
AS THE global population reaches eight billion this week, India, formerly a powerful driver of the number of people on the planet, is experiencing a marked slowdown.
Falling fertility rates in the country have forced at least one state to consider reviewing policies that encouraged families not to go beyond having two children. The world’s population was estimated by the United Nations to have hit eight billion on Tuesday (15).
“The milestone is an occasion to celebrate diversity and advancements while considering humanity’s shared responsibility for the planet,” UN SecretaryGeneral Antonio Guterres said.
China and India account for more than a third of the total world population.
India estimates its population at 1.38 billion, slightly lower than the 1.4 billion that the World Bank estimates for China.
India will become the most populous country in 2023, according to the United Nations.
But India’s annual population growth has averaged 1.2 per cent since 2011, compared with 1.7 per cent in the 10 years previously, government figures show.
Further slowing can be expected. India’s total fertility rate (TFR) – children per woman – fell to two in the latest assessment period, for 2019-2021, from 3.4 in 1992-93, according to a government report issued last month. It estimated that the average must be 2.1 for the population to reproduce itself.
Increasing use of contraceptives and rising education among girls could have contributed to the decline in fertility rates, the government says.
The use of family-planning methods jumped to 66.7 per cent in 2019-21 from 53.5 per cent in 2015-16.
That indicated that India’s national population policies and health systems were working, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) said in comments shared with Reuters. “As India invests in its younger people, it needs to make plans for a demographic transition to take better care of a greater proportion of older people in the future,” the UNFPA said.
In Odisha, an eastern state, the TFR dropped 21 per cent in only 11 years, between 2008 and 2010 and 2019 and 2021, maybe too fast from the point of view of the government there.
“Odisha may need to relook at the policy framework that promotes a two-child norm,” the state’s Planning and Convergence Department said in a June note seen by Reuters. The policies discourage exceeding two but do not encourage reaching that number.
The northeastern state of Assam, with its TFR higher than the national average, is still pushing in the other direction.
In January, it implemented a policy that made anyone with more than two children ineligible for government jobs and election to local and civic bodies. “This is the need of the hour to have such a legislation in place,” Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said.
But such measures have limited impact on fertility, the UNFPA said, citing global experience. “Most such schemes have had only a marginal impact on fertility and in some cases have even been counterproductive,” the UN agency said.
The current population is more than three times higher than the 2.5 billion global headcount in 1950. After a peak in the early 1960s, the world’s population growth rate has decelerated dramatically, Rachel Snow of the UN Population Fund said.
Annual growth has fallen from a high of 2.1 per cent between 1962 and 1965 to below one per cent in 2020.
That could potentially fall further to around 0.5 per cent by 2050 due to a continued decline in fertility rates, the United Nations projects.
The UN projects the population to continue growing to about 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050, and peaking around 10.4 billion in the 2080s.
Population growth has also magnified the environmental impacts of economic development. While some worry that eight billion humans is too many for the planet, most experts say the bigger problem is the overconsumption of resources by the wealthiest people.
“Some express concerns our world is overpopulated,” said UN Population Fund chief Natalia Kanem. “I am here to say clearly the sheer number of human lives is not a cause for fear.”
Joel Cohen of Rockefeller University’s Laboratory of Populations told AFP the question of how many people Earth can support has two sides: natural limits and human choices.
The overconsumption of fossil fuels, for example, leads to more carbon dioxide emissions, responsible for global warming. “We are stupid. We lacked foresight. We are greedy. We don’t use the information we have. That’s where the choices and the problems lie,” said Cohen.
However, he rejects the idea that humans are a curse on the planet, saying people should be given better choices.