Jokes and memes aside : India's population grew tremendously between the 1930's and 1970's when those governing woke up suddenly to the fact it was growing at an alarming rate without concurrent resource growth and began devising policy to control it. Tubectomies, Vasectomies were touted. Sterilization targets were given to states by the centre. International aid was sought and supplied. "We two ours two" became a policy in India towards reducing the fertility rate towards replacement levels of population growth , which we are almost at now - that is- 2.1 fertility rate from more than 5 in the 1950's. China went a step further and mandated a strict "We two ours one" policy in 1980 which was only withdrawn in 2016- because the demography was getting screwed, and even then, the policy withdrawal came after many, many internal calls from population scientists for ending the policy over the course of several years.
Now to the other side of the coin - Who wants to have kids these days? Either people across the world are getting super smart and learning from the experiences of others or people are automatically becoming less enthused by the idea of becoming parents and not having much between the sheets action. In fact, discounting a few northern states, fertility rate is actually below replacement level in most of India. And so our population may stabilise in the 1950's and then begin to decline is what Indian population experts are saying.
My current interest is in what happens when people refuse to have kids? This phenomenon is already happening to some extent. For various reasons : I don't think I'll be a good parent. I am too focussed on my career to take care of a kid. I don't really like kids. I'm not good at marriage and I don't want to be single parent. And so, me, coming from a small metro city in a still developing country, know personally, people who say the above things. So, this is a real thing. At some point more people will say the above things and less people will be willing to have children than the ones who don't want kids.
Countries and politics can induce people into having kids by giving freebies (Child allowance), more time off work for parenting, etc - like several European countries do. But still, people are just not willing to have children or most have one child and so politicians are encouraging skilled immigrants. As people see that having no kids or fewer kids is rewarding, more and more will opt for that lifestyle. Then what? What will happen to a small country when there are hardly any people now and will have none in the future. This is not likely to happen in my lifetime. But this is a scenario that may play out in the next few centuries. (Provided we are not hit by a massive meteor, huge tsunami doesn't drown half the world, etc etc.
If everyone has just one kid or less, then what happens? The world population goes into a gradual decline like China's policy affected their demographic spread. More people would be older and less would be of working age. Then eventually as population dwindled further and further, cities and towns would get abandoned as governments would work to concentrate the resources better to provide for those cities that were still occupied. Like there are more unmarried men available compared to unmarried women in China and India, there might be sex ratio issues in the reverse.
So clearly this one kid per every two people is not really a good idea. This replacement ratio seems to work better. But it would mean that population would remain the same as it is currently : Every two people have 2.1 kids (That 0.1 is to account for those who die off before reaching reproduction age) . And the population that is currently on earth is 8billion odd. (Happy world population day btw). That does not seem like the right number. There is rampant poverty in a lot of places. There is malnutrition. Lack of access to healthcare. So that is not the right amount to people this earth can support. Then what is?
Nope, there is no magic number. But whatever it is that scientists and experts postulate is far lesser than 8 billion for sure. Some say 5 Billion. Some say 2 Billion. Some propose a range : Between 500 Million - 5 Billion. And so we are back to Thanos :-) Clearly this earth is overpopulated. So this population reduction policy that India is following "We two ours two", while not ideal, is the best we have got. So I say we stick to it. The problem comes when every country is trying their own population control or are implementing a population growth policy at very different times.
By the way - Nigeria's the new China and India. Their population is set to grow very fast in the next few decades. So clearly my dire predictions of abandoned cities will not come to pass soon. We and China can always invite people from countries which have too many people to come and populate our dying cities and towns in a couple of 100 years, eh?
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