A friend, reading yesterday’s post, asked about fertility in
India and China, the nations with the largest populations.
China currently has one of the lowest fertility rates of any
nation at 1.57 births per couple. In addition the decades of a one-child rule
which was introduced in 1979 and only rescinded in 2015, and the cultural preference
for male children which led to the abortion of many female fetuses, has left
the male-female ratio among the younger generation
at 120+ males for each 100 females. Clearly China has a severe future demographic
problem. China’s population will remain stable until about 2030, after which it
will begin to decline. And the urban young in China show the same trend toward
fewer births and childless marriages as is seen elsewhere in the world.
India as, as of 2017, has a fertility rate of 2.43 children
per couple, which is enough to keep the population more or less stable or even
growing slowly. In fact within the next decade Indian’s population will exceed
that of China, at about 1.44 billion people. However there is every reason to believe
that India’s young will follow the same pattern as the rest of the world, and
that fertility rates will continue to drop over the next decade or so until it
is below the replacement level.
And as with other nations around the world, fertility rates
in both nations are higher for those religiously inclined than for the secular population.
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