Topic: (Population, Poverty and Development)
According to the case study, both China and India have larger populations in the world, despite the fact that china is highly sensitive and have one child policy but still population is growing too fast. By 2050, it is estimated that India would surpass china by 200 million people. However, both the countries have viewed that this population pressures can occur as threatening prospects for the future development of the country. As an economist point of view, whenever fertility falls, income rises due to more opportunity cost of women’s time. Both countries during 1980 and 1990 have experienced growth in development when there is a decline in fertility rate. Hence, overall population plays important part in stages of growth.
Specifically, China during 1949 move towards communism and believes that more population would leads to more developed powerful country. However, in 1980 china implements its one child policy. Families with one child gets higher benefit while families more than child have to pay taxes levied on them. Moreover, giving birth to male become their preferences and there is a gender bias in china male to female ratios was getting higher.
According to economists, these cultural preferences definitely change further development of economy. In 1998 august, Chinese government was surprised to find that population increased by 1 billion mark decided to enforced the idea of one child policy in urban as well as in rural areas. China’s population has continued to grow as larger, younger cohorts replace smaller, older ones. However, the population growth rate has slowed dramatically therefore it is not expected to exceed 1.4 billion before starting to fall. Many families in rural areas exempted from one child and consist of more than two children which results in higher unemployment in rural areas to which they moved to urban areas to find employment, some people are worried now so china have to reassess the policies the policies to prevent too high dependency ratio of retired to working adults.
China’s apparent success in difficult childbearing, the policy has given some observers the advantage of Dictatorship, not democracy which stimulates development which India lacked. Amartya Sen also believed that china is successful because of higher investments in health and education which increases GDP and employment, which is quite less in India. In addition, this successful population control had long term risks. Last but not least, in summary, despite the rapid economic growth and the pressure and incentives of the family planning account. For some of the reasons for the decline in China’s fertility rate, other factors include female literacy rates, improvements in children’s health and provide women with more economic opportunities. These are also a factor in the great success of Kerala in India in reducing the fertility rate.
On the other hand, if we see population policies in India so the country has also implement different programs in order to control the population. In 1949, India being the first country to implement family planning program. By 1975 and 1977 Indira Gandhi tried to control population through forced sterilization which later let her out of the office after failed elections. Later Indira Gandhi again get into power in 1980 but she made commitment to not reintroduce birth control policies. The result is “missing women” The problem is similar to China. With this economist believed that male to female reach to 108 to 100 which is the highest in the world.
Moreover, Kerala, one the state in India has reduced birth rate to 1.7 birth rate per woman. Later greater awareness were done by acknowledging people to have small families in order to grow the countries. TVs, Billboards and other advertisements help in rural areas such as village to understand about the family planning. In Kerala, these advertisements were effective and more than 85% of woman in India are literate which grows the economy as woman would also become of the economy that means more employment, which happens due to providing higher status to women in the local culture which become example for developing countries.
Lastly, Kerala become the example that whenever fertility reduces there is greater economic development as well as human development that leads to more woman empowerment for which society plays an effective role for the economic benefits, but there is no reason to think that Kerala’s success, if there is, it cannot be copied elsewhere in India political and social will. Sen. also concluded that Kerala is one the state which is better than china’s many states in terms of female literacy.
