The fertility rate in India today is 2.0 per woman, below the 2.1 replacement rate.

In the 1960s, India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi dramatically expanded the first national family planning program in a major developing country, offering cash incentives for both men and women to be sterilized.

During the mid-1970s, Gandhi allowed states to operate compulsory sterilization camps. An estimated 19 million people were sterilized, three-quarters of them men. The program’s unpopularity helped bring down Gandhi’s government in 1977.

Late last month, the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), a periodic investigation of half a million households, announced a milestone: The country’s fertility rate had for the first time fallen below the widely accepted “replacement level” of 2.1 children per woman.

Thanks to past high fertility rates, two-thirds of the population is under 35 years old, and a large cohort of people is now entering childbearing age. Even at replacement fertility rates, the children of these young people will continue to push up numbers, and India may exceed China as the world’s most populous nation as early as next year. India’s population is set to decline in about 3 decades.

Declines in death rates in children under age 5—from 241 per thousand in 1960 to 34 per thousand today—have made women more receptive to family planning. That allows all families, including those who are poor and uneducated, to assume that every child is likely to grow up.

In the 1960s, about 90% of Indian women were illiterate, but by the 2011 census illiteracy had fallen to 35%, concentrated among older women. In the decade after 2005, better education contributed 47% of the fertility decline,

From here.

Shift towards more inclusiveness within each party since 2016, more so by Dems. From a 2021 Pew Research poll.

Does one need to speak English?

Adhere to U.S. customs and traditions?

Be a Christian?

Be born in the United States?

 

 

A very large share of unauthorized women in the U.S. are for all practical purposes Americans. But the hourglass profile has become more prominent (large numbers high ed and without a high school diploma) contrasted with the typical U.S. born profile of a large middle bump (HS and some college).

The Center for Migration Studies has profiled data from the 2019 Survey on 4.8 million unauthorized women. 45% are from Mexico, 44% elsewhere in Latin America, and 11% from Asia. 41% have been here for at least 15 years or more.

What’s most interesting is that the formal educational level of these women has increased over time. I’ve posted on this often, for example here.

For these women to be granted legal status, 1.3 million (about a quarter) qualify under DACA (Dream Act). 95% have complete high school, 45% have completed some higher education, 44% have been here for at least 15 years, and 90% speak English well (or only English). 78% in 2019 were above poverty level (compared to 10% total population).

A hourglass profile is evident, likely become more prominent with an increase of unauthorized persons from Asia. More persons are with advanced education, while many still arrive with less than high school education. Among persons who arrived 2010- 2019, about 20% were without a high school degree while half had at least some higher education.

Migration Policy Institute addresses the issue of “complementary pathways” to increase the flow of refugee resettlement:

Recent displacement crises—from Syria, Afghanistan, and Venezuela to Myanmar, South Sudan, and most recently, Ukraine—have imposed huge stresses on the humanitarian protection regime.

Complementary pathways (including family reunification schemes, labor and education opportunities, and community and private sponsorship refugee resettlement and humanitarian admission programs) have grown in popularity in recent years, but thus far have benefitted only a small number of people. The real promise of complementary pathways is to beef up capacity—both in the ability to process of refugees and in public willingness to welcome refugees.

Thus far, only Canada—the architect of this approach—has realized this vision, with roughly two-thirds of all refugees each year arriving through community or private sponsorship programs.

Private or community sponsorship schemes put in place in Canada, Israel, and the United Kingdom for Ukrainians try to scale and fund these programs to unprecedented levels. The U.S. government announced a private sponsorship pilot program. United States also is allowing for community sponsorship via a Sponsor Circles program—still a small pilot—for Afghan refugees and evacuees. Canada has launched an Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot to channel potential refugees into the Canadian labor market based on skills rather than vulnerability, which could prove a model for other countries if effectively scaled.

A Migration Policy Institute study found that the number of refugees entering complementary pathways has been constrained not only due to limited eligibility compared to other entry channels, but also because of other challenges. These programs are resource intensive to operate, need flexible legal frameworks to adapt existing visa channels (e.g. for study/work) to refugees’ backgrounds, require strong buy-in from and coordination between relevant stakeholders (including volunteers, civil-society groups, companies, universities, and local and national authorities), and typically rely on diverse sources of funding.