Xard wrote:China is relaxing its one-child policies
UrsusArctos wrote:It's too little, too late.
It's not of course. If I were to guess, it's likely the age-old economic pressures of not having enough food to feed a girl who won't develop quickly enough to help on the farm is the culprit.
As food production grows, and poverty becomes less of a barrier, it will diminish, as poverty in India in general has diminished.
but I can certainly understand the need for population-control policies
There is never a "need" for them. Birth rates wax and wane at their own discretion, we see looking back in history where women voluntarily had less children for a generation, then two generations next started having more, and then two generation next back to less. That people in urban centers having less children than those in rural areas is equally proof that birth rates are something that can take care of themselves, given healthy sociological conditions.
Further, having "enough resources" even if that was a concern, is not a collective issue. Rather, it's a personal one. Only families know if they have enough to feed and provide for their children, central planners have no such knowledge and generally assume (wrongly) that whatever the birth rate is currently, it will continue undaunted into the future. I say this both for those planners who say it's too high, or too low.