On Mon, 2007-08-06 at 09:09 +0530, shiv sastry wrote: > But, as Eugen has pointed out, birth rates have fallen in such societies for > various reasons. I am guessing that birth rates will fall among the subset of > Indians who belong to the IT sector but continue to remain high among others.
note that the highest birthrates in europe are in societies where opportunities for women have been matched by their social treatment, such as scandinavia and to some extent france (where state or employer childcare is of a relatively high standard). in some of these countries, native population birthrates are at almost replacement levels. (though births - and upbringing of children - are often outside marriage). low birthrates are common in societies where opportunities for women have improved (somewhat) but not (enough) their social treatment, such as germany or "family-values" spain and italy (which has europe's lowest birth rate). this applies globally - japan, with women needing to (and able to, sort of) have jobs but expected to mother their husbands and do everything at home, has one of the lowest birthrates in the world. the economist had a cover last week on policies to improve birthrates, which essentially favoured the scandinavian (or french) model of ensuring the availability of childcare and other measures to ensure that children get looked after without women having to bear a disproportionate share of the burden of doing so (e.g. norway has an extremely generous paid maternity leave, but also an extended mandatory paternity leave). while these solutions are expensive, often for the taxpayer, the alternative, of a greying society supported by a shrinking working-age population, is much more expensive. india is far away from this, partly due to the lack of success of family planning relative to china's mandatory policies, india will be a young country well into the next century while china turns grey. -rishab
