(I'm trying to leave this topic but it's fascinating stuff . . )
Stanford history prof Martin Lewis last week published a piece on India's falling birth rate: from 1960 to 2009 it fell from about six live births per woman to just 2.5 (2.1 is replacement rate). As India continues to modernize, there's no reason to assume their birth rate will stop falling right here.
Ten different maps of India's states show their rates of Female Literacy, GDP per Capita (gross domestic product per person), Percentage of Urban Population, Life Expectancy at Birth, Electricity for Lighting, TV Ownership, Percent of Women Exposed to Media -- all compared side by side to India's map of Total Fertility Rate (TFR).
These map comparisons show that India's falling TFR tends to correspond with more electricity, more wealth, and more tv. Again, as Jonathan Last concluded, falling TFR is not a result of temporary social stress, but results from more opportunity for income, more education, more modernity in almost every way.
Per last Friday's post, there are still folks who worry about population explosion. Martin Lewis says they should change their narrative:
"old-school environmentalists typically prefer to “wrap the latest scientific research about an ecological calamity in a tragic narrative that conjures nostalgia for Nature while prophesying even worse disasters to come unless human societies repent for their sins against Nature . .” The data presented here confirm that it is time for a new mode of environmental rhetoric."
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