Is India a Population Bubble??

By 1999, world population reached 6 billion, and in the relatively short time between 2007 and 2050, there could be roughly 2.4 billion more people on Earth needing clean water, space and other natural resources from their environment in order to survive.

Overpopulation occurs when a population's density exceeds the capacity of the environment to supply the health requirements of an individual, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The 2007 population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau and the United Nations Population Division set China's current population at around 1.3 billion people, and India's at around 1.1 billion. If population continues to grow at the estimated rate, such rapid growth in India between now and mid-century could lead to overpopulation and an uncertain future for the environment and the people living there.

Today, there are more than 6.5 billion people, and that number may grow to around 9 billion within this half-century. Several decades ago, many people considered rising population to be the main challenge facing humanity. Now we realize that it matters only insofar as people consume and produce. The average rates at which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the developing world. If India as well as China were to catch up, world consumption rates would triple. If the whole developing world were suddenly to catch up, world rates would increase elevenfold. It would be as if the world population ballooned to 72 billion people (retaining present consumption rates).

The only approach that India and other developing countries will accept is to aim to make consumption rates and living standards more equal around the world. But the world doesn’t have enough resources to allow for raising India’s consumption rates. Does this mean we’re headed for disaster? No, we could have a stable outcome in which all countries converge on consumption rates considerably below the current highest levels.

Cities turn out to be a driving force behind that correction. Keep in mind that we have shifted, in just two centuries, from a planet where 3 percent of people lived in cities to a planet where 50 percent of us do. When people move to cities, they have significantly fewer children for several reasons: women tend to work, birth control is more readily available, and space limitations make children an economic liability. (In rural life, in contrast, children who help with farm labor are an economic asset.) Nations like Italy whose populations have long settled in cities have seen their childbirth rate drop below replacement levels. And in recent decades, even the developing world has seen a dramatic decrease. Fertility rates (average children per family) in rapidly urbanizing countries like Brazil and Indonesia have dropped sharply — from 6.5 to 2.25 and from 5.6 to 2.7, respectively. The more people you have in your cities today, the fewer you’ll have nationwide 50 years from now.