1 Billion is Not Just “a little” More Than 1 Million
From 2010–2020, China and India have continued to grow and have become the two largest populated countries in the world and account for 67% of Asia's population. With this mass of population, both countries have seen increasingly high rates in fertility, birth and mortality rates. This puts into view that if these two countries continue to grow at rapid rates, then the rest of the world doesn’t have a chance to avoid “over population”.
China's population in 2010 was 1,337,705,000 and in 2020 was 1,411,100,000. India's population in 2010 was 1,234,281,163 and in 2020 was 1,380,004,385. That means that China saw a 733,950,000 increase and India saw a 145,723,222 in only 10 years.
In 1982, China has officially written into their constitution that each family was only to give birth to one child; now, in 2022, China is trying to have another baby boost as their overall population growth is at its all time lowest in decades. As of May 31, 2021, the Chinese government now allows families to have up to three children in hopes of increasing population growth. Despite their massive population, China seems to want to keep growing even though over-population is at hand.
With this massive increase in population, this means that more people are being born than there are of people dying in these two countries. Compared to China, India now has policies for each family to only give birth to 1–2 kids. India is seeing larger growths in population than ever and this kind of policy would hopefully show a drop in birth and fertility rates within the coming years.
When looking at a data set from the World Data Bank with series names such as Birth rates, Adolescent fertility rates, life expectancy and mortality rates under 5, there is a clear indication that even though China’s overall population is larger, India’s fertility and birth rate is larger. China’s fertility rate (women 19 and up) increased from 1.627 in 2010 to 1.7 in 2020- that is not nearly as big of a fertility rate to India's, coming in at 2.58 in 2010 to 2.18 in 2020. Come the year of 2050, researchers say that India will outgrow the population of China, which has never happened before.
As far as birth rates go, China’s has decreased by 3.38% from the years of 2010–2020. India’s has also decreased by 3.677% from the years of 2010–2020. With this in mind, it is clear that more people aren’t trying as much to have children at this time, but another issue at hand is the fertility rate for adolescents (ages 15–19). This is another issue that is happening in both countries because younger females are able to become pregnant and give birth, which in return helps the growth of the population. China’s rate was 7.34% in 2010 and India’s was at a high 35%. In the year of 2020, Chinas increased by 2% and India’s had decreased by 20%.
Both countries have experience massive increase in health benefits and technology that the birth contraceptives have become better and smarter. Women are now allowed to use these contraception in order to protect themselves from not having children. With these two countries having different values than the United States, arranged mirages are still at hand- meaning that in the case that the woman wants to take a contraceptive, their husbands can still prevent them from using contraception such as IUDs or pills.
To put this statistics into perspective, the US population is only 329.5 million, whereas India and China are both in the billions, with about 1.1 billion more people in their countries than in the US. To really think about how much bigger 1 billion is compared to 1 million, we can think of it as 1 million seconds vs 1 billion seconds. 1 million seconds is about 11 days and 1 billion seconds would be around 31.5 years. Not to mention that China and India are both smaller than the US. That means that these two countries have over populated over 1 billion people into their countries, smaller than the US.
As much a good thing it is to see that birth and fertility rates have gone down according to the World Data Bank data, over-population is still at hand with these two countries as they both take up about 35% of the world population. Both countries have to take into consideration how small their countries are compared to others and really analyze if building their population is the smart choice. With efforts and data to show that birth rates are decreasing, both countries are showing great progress of slowing down population growth.
