I have heard many people from the western world (and now many others) criticizing India and China for their high population. Producing too many babies is not good for the earth. But before you look down on China or India and start blaming them, lets look at the 2 assumptions that most people have:
- Indians and Chinese keep producing too many babies unlike the “better” developed world.
- World will run out of resources to support this growing population.
For the first assumption, we need to look at the current population growth rate and the historical population figures.
The annual population growth rate for 2018 as per WorldBank is 0.5% for China, 0.6% for US and 1% for India. China, because they implemented the one child policy, is growing at a very low rate. India is growing at 1% which is higher than United States but not too high. For example, if each of them were currently at 100 million people, then next year they would be:
China: 100,500,000
United States: 100,600,000
India: 101,000,000
As evident above, the difference is not crazy high, and that means people in India and China are not reproducing like crazy but at a nomial rate. However, each one of these country is not currently at 100 million people, and that is why we need to look at historical population figures.
Based on census.gov, the estimate for world population in the year 1400 was 375 million. At the same time, population in China was 65 million. That means China had around 17.5% of world population in 1400, and now they have 18% of world population. So that means the Chinese population grew at the same rate as the world population grew. Estimates for India is from 1750, when the population was accounted to be 125 million, which was around 17.8% of world population. Today India has 17.7% of world population. So India’s population also grew at the same rate the world population did. To conclude Indias and Chinese were not hyper at reproducing.
It seems that for some reason historically India and China had high population to begin with. This might be because of various reasons like India and China were both rich civilizations where people were migrating too. They had better medicines, nutrition and higher life expectancy. They could sustain the growing population.
During the European Agricultural and Industrial revolutions, the life expectancy in Europe also increased dramatically. In between 1700 to 1900, Europe population increased from 100 million to 400 million. Their share of world population in 1900 was 25%, so the European population grew faster than Indians or Chinese!
However today European population is at 9.78% of world population. So did they control and grow at lower rate than world population did? The answer is no, but they spread. Europeans started exploration and settling in new lands, sometimes mixing with the original population of the land and sometimes replacing them. From 1815 to 1932, 60 million people left Europe to settle in new lands, and this emigrated population multiplied rapidly and grew to 38% of world’s population by 1914. All of Americas and Australia (& NZ), and some in Africa and Asia. So one can now understand that the majority of people in the world currently are European descendants rather than Indian and Chinese. Although emigration from India and China has increased in the recent years, it is miniscule compared to the past European emigration.
The point is, healthy communities have grown rapidly in the past before stabilizing, and in recent history it was the European population. So stop judging other community when everybody is the same.
Second assumption – Will world run out of resources? This video from Kurzgesagt does a very good job of explaining what will happen to the population if we let things play out naturally.
So in short, the population will control itself. However, that does not mean that resources will not run out. As people become more economically affluent, their consumption of goods will increase. We know that consumption is higher in United States. One American consumes goods as much as 48 Indians. So if people start to consume like the US does, then maybe we will run out of resources way sooner than we think. There is solution to it however:
a. Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.
b. Utilize outer space to get the needed resources.
Progress is happening on both paths, and as we know humans are really good at surviving.