India On Pace to Become Most Populous Country
For World Population Day this month, a number of news outlets noted that India is currently on target to surpass China as the most populous country in the world by 2035. But a lot of the reporting typified the sort of errors that the media have long made about population growth. As an example, consider The Scotsman’s take on population growth in China compared to India (emphasis added)
According to figures produced for the United Nations World Population Day, which falls today, China is currently the world’s most puoplous country with 1,289 million, followed by India with 1,069 million, and the US third a long way behind with 292 million.
The main reason is that India has never followed China’s Draconian “one child” policy. At the height of the birth control campaign by the Chinese communist government couples who stopped at one child were given preferences in education, healthcare, housing, and jobs. Couples who produced an “out-of-quote” child could be fined or lose access to education or other privileges.
Though the policy has been softened, the impact of the period when it was applied most harshly is now being felt.
“Between the 1960s and the 1980s, China experienced one of the most rapid declines ever recorded in a national population. In just 15 years, the number of children a woman would expect to have fell from about six to just over two,” says Professor Nancy E. Riley, an expert on population and social change in China at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine.
As a democracy India has not been able or willing to use coercion, though it has tried persuasion. A study called India Project by a team of experts from the London School of Economics, led by Professor Tim Dyson, estimates that on current trends India’s population will touch 1.4 billion by 2026, 1.5 billion by 2036 and could approach 1.6 billion by 2051.
It’s truly amazing that a newspaper can produce such pathetic reporting.
First, the reporter emphasizes that China’s total fertility rate has fallen, supposedly due to coercion there, and gives the impression that India has not see comparable gains because it is unwilling to adopt a one-child policy. But in the same period, without any coercion, India’s total fertility rate fell 42 percent. The current rate is 3.1 and falling. That was a very impressive feat, but one you would never know about from reading The Scotsman.
Second, The Scotsman attributes the large decline in fertility from the 1960s to the 1980s to the one-child policy. But since the one-child policy wasn’t instituted until 1979, it’s ridiculous to attribute all of the drop to the one-child efforts. In fact, the bulk of the large drop in fertility in China occurred before the one-child policy was instituted. The TFR in China fell from 6 in 1970 to 2.8 in 1979, all without the draconian policies that The Scotsman asserts is singularly responsible for the decline.
Third, The Scotsman sets up a classic false dichotomy that just won’t go away. In this world, countries have only two choices — dictatorship and declines in population growth or democracy and increases in population growth. But the countries with the lowest total fertility rates in the world are democracies — countries like Italy and Spain.
Reporters might actually want to look at the data instead of simply inserting every population story into the same erroneous molds.
Source:
India to overtake China as most populous nation. Ian Mather, The Scotsman, July 11, 2004.
The India On Pace to Become Most Populous Country by Brian Carnell, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.