The BJP administrator of the Lakshadweep Islands has created a furore through proposals such as prohibiting anybody with over two children from contesting local elections. Similar prohibitions exist in Assam, Odisha, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. This is silly. India and the world face not excessive but insufficient births.
China once enforced a single child policy, later allowed two children, and now encourages three. Its working age population is falling so it desperately needs more workers to boost GDP. For a stable population, the total fertility rate — children born per woman — should be 2.1. This will not immediately stop population growth: future mothers have already been born. So, population typically rises for two decades after reaching 2.1 and then flattens.
India’s fertility is plummeting. It must abandon bogus fears of excess population and prepare for a future with fewer and fewer people of working age (15 to 65 years old) and skyrocketing aged dependents. Improved medicine is raising life expectancy towards 90 years. New techniques keep prolonging life but at a high, rising cost. Societies need far more workers to finance care for the aged. Hence many countries have introduced incentives for more children. Alas, none has worked well. The cost of good child upbringing has shot up, so couples cannot afford even two children. Many countries are proposing free childcare, longer maternity and paternity leave, free childcare, longer maternity and paternity leave, free child healthcare and other such incentives. Yet their fertility keeps falling.
Read More at https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/view-two-child-cap-and-other-disincentives-should-go-we-need-more-babies-not-less/articleshow/83888167.cms
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