Is the large population growth in decolonized nations inevitable?

Many third world/ developing countries have had large population growth over the past few decades.

Is this inevitable? Or can it be stopped (without genocide) with a POD after 1850? (This sounds a bit worse than I intended it to.)
 
Find a way to speed up the increase in women's access to education and contraceptive services shortly after decolonization and keep it sustained. Those two measures have shown to be the most effective policy-driven factors in lowering fertility rate. How plausible that is, however, and how to do it is the big question. There's going to be some population increase no matter what since the demographic transition is going to happen anyway, but reducing the amount of time a country spends in the second and early third periods of the demographic transition would reduce the overall population growth.

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Well, is the developing world unique? The UK's population is about 6X what it was in 1800. China's was around 300 million. So proportionately, it doesn't seem that odd...
 
Find a way to speed up the increase in women's access to education and contraceptive services shortly after decolonization and keep it sustained. . .
That's what I've heard, too. That education for women motivates women on average to delay starting families and to have smaller families.

And, as an amazing accident of history, the "nice" methods of limiting population can be started right away, say before a government gets dictatorial power, have powerful indirect effects on the economy, and work pretty doggone well.

Now, on the philosophic side, I'm a big population person rather than a small population person. On a different thread, maybe we could get into that some.
 
Well, is the developing world unique? The UK's population is about 6X what it was in 1800. China's was around 300 million. So proportionately, it doesn't seem that odd...

All nations have grown but proportionally ex-colonial ones have grown the most. In 1950 Europe had about 22% of world population compared to 9% in Africa.


Find a way to speed up the increase in women's access to education and contraceptive services shortly after decolonization and keep it sustained. Those two measures have shown to be the most effective policy-driven factors in lowering fertility rate. How plausible that is, however, and how to do it is the big question. There's going to be some population increase no matter what since the demographic transition is going to happen anyway, but reducing the amount of time a country spends in the second and early third periods of the demographic transition would reduce the overall population growth.

Thanks. Do you believe that colonial or post-colonial governments would ever create the conditions for that to happen? I somewhat doubt it.
 
All nations have grown but proportionally ex-colonial ones have grown the most. In 1950 Europe had about 22% of world population compared to 9% in Africa.

Starting in 1950 is the wrong way to think about it - Europe was already well into stage 3 of the demographic transition, Africa was just starting stage 2. If you go back to 1800 or even before, things look very different. The Netherlands have gone from 2 million people in 1815 to 16 million today. If you mentally think of the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand as part of the European world, since they got extensive European immigration in the 19c and 20c, the population growth was even faster.

Basically, going back to 1800, Catholic Europe and East Asia have grown slowly, only by a factor of about 4 (even lower in France); Northern Europe, including its New World offshoots, has grown more quickly, and India has grown at about an average rate, both growing by a factor of about 8; Latin America has grown very fast, and Africa has grown fast and is not done growing.

Thanks. Do you believe that colonial or post-colonial governments would ever create the conditions for that to happen? I somewhat doubt it.

South Korea. Bangladesh. Malaysia and Indonesia. Thailand, if you count it as postcolonial. Tunisia.
 
Starting in 1950 is the wrong way to think about it - Europe was already well into stage 3 of the demographic transition, Africa was just starting stage 2. If you go back to 1800 or even before, things look very different. The Netherlands have gone from 2 million people in 1815 to 16 million today. If you mentally think of the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand as part of the European world, since they got extensive European immigration in the 19c and 20c, the population growth was even faster.

Basically, going back to 1800, Catholic Europe and East Asia have grown slowly, only by a factor of about 4 (even lower in France); Northern Europe, including its New World offshoots, has grown more quickly, and India has grown at about an average rate, both growing by a factor of about 8; Latin America has grown very fast, and Africa has grown fast and is not done growing.



South Korea. Bangladesh. Malaysia and Indonesia. Thailand, if you count it as postcolonial. Tunisia.

I get the point better now, thanks. I'm going to read into this further over the next few days.
 
Many third world/ developing countries have had large population growth over the past few decades.

Is this inevitable? Or can it be stopped (without genocide) with a POD after 1850? (This sounds a bit worse than I intended it to.)

Well, part of it is improvments in healthcare, and new governments that cared somewhat more about what was, in the end, their people.
 
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