India's surprise baby bust

Is this a surprise to people there though? There was a big boom around independence and people wanted to give their own children a better life. India doesn't have a free national public school system like other countries do, which I believe is a big factor.

The purpose of life is reproduction and having your own kids is the greatest joy in life. I am a very successful and wealthy entrepreneur who can do anything I wish with my time and I have done everything; travel, rock climbing, super cars, wine tasting, etc etc. Time with my kids is all that matters to me.

Am I the only one that doesn't with about this "crisis". The world's population isn't going to fall, it'll level off around 2100, nobody is enough to read this will be around, our kids and grandkids can decide for themselves.

Local populations will see very different trajectories, yes. Africa will see population growth and many other places will see steep decline. Societies can choose to keep their current system and take in immigrants, or choose to keep their "national character" (or whatever) and rejig their societies so the remaining productive parts pay for increasing numbers of old people. Grifters (Brexiters, MAGA, Le Pen, etc) will attempt to sidestep such obvious tradeoffs, but they will fail, hastening the decline of these societies.

Every single population growth and peak chart for the last 10 years (and maybe 20) has been wrong with growth slowing much faster than expected. It's basically the opposite of all the solar power growth predictions. I predict this article is wrong too and the growth continues to fall. Just wait until no kids becomes the norm for couples in their 30s in India like it is here in the US.

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Lots of theories here. Industrialization. Wealth. Education. First world transformation. Kids' expense.

All of these are second-round of reasons.

Primary reason: Materialistic wealth or wealth in general is preferred over human contact.

Effect: People connection drops. Community drops. Independence and Individualism prosper.

Secondary effect: The seeds for family development (community, human connection, village camaraderie) go missing. Growing a family now requires artificial support. When family members grow up, their time is now spread across materialisms and career development. Career development goes up and takes priority. Wealth acquisition takes priority. Except everyone is doing this so basic needs have to be fulfilled with limited resources. All prices are now going up. What was the point of everyone working now? Wealth acquisition. hmm.

Tertiary Effect: Huge workforce looking for work. Wages diminish because supply went up. Businesses prosper. Market caps go up. Business becomes easier. Dominance becomes easier.

4th Effect: Debt goes up to fulfill materialistic quests. Interest locks in people into a debt that grows over time even if the supply of money does not go up. Now people are perpetually looking to complete paying off their debt. And they will perpetually need to work. And worker supply perpetually increases. Freedoms go away. Wealth centers on to certain people. They take over media, entertainment, recreation, and tourism. We end up with a tale of two worlds.

Edit: Before the primary reason goes into effect, I will acknowledge industrialization improved people's access to wealth and materialism. And that replaced human connection.

I encourage anyone surprised that people would opt out of babies and raising kids actually spend time with kids.

Not just like for the holidays and pass them back when they start crying, but an actual extended period of time dealing with all the issues that they bring.

You've got to be a special kind of idealistic romantic to still see the appeal afterwards. Which is great for you of course if you do. But there's a reason authoritarians across the world are banning abortion and targeting birth control.

Less children less taxing on the planet. Not everyone needs a replacement copy of themselves. The world population in 2026 is approximately 8.3 billion people. It is projected to continue growing, reaching around 10 billion by 2060.

I’m always a bit confused by this, don’t we want this? If the end goal is to have ai and robots do it all, and there are no jobs left, what would children provide if they aren’t down payments on a future work force? Only people that wanted children would have children as all the old childless people would be taken care of by the states robots. I mean not exactly like that but something like that. Ai isn’t taken anyone’s job is there is nobody there to take it from. Or is that line of think too… something.