Sound population management ad infinitum: How relatively low fertility rates can lead to an “Evergreen demographic boon”

Description

The term “Total fertility rate” also often abbreviated to TFR is a widely used, though somewhat
misunderstood term today. The term has often been twisted and maligned in the press by reporters
who have not understood the essence of the term. But what exactly is a total fertility rate? To put it in
simple terms, the term “total fertility rate”, (which is a purely synthetic rate) in the average number of
children a woman in a given society or culture could be expected to bear in her lifetime based on agespecific birth rates, assuming that she lives till the end of her childbearing age. The total fertility rate depends on a large number of factors including social, cultural and economic factors and varies widely from country to country, and region to region. It ranges from a high of 6.6 children per woman in Niger, (the TFR there has been more than 7.0 for most of this century) to 0.90 children per woman in South Korea (both figures are estimates for 2024 by the United Nations population fund). There are of course, several variants of the basic theme. Sometimes, age group-specific fertility rates are also calculated, though this is relatively less common. Total fertility rates are computed or calculated annually for different countries, territories, or geographical areas, and mid-year estimated values are most commonly taken into consideration for this purpose. Total fertility rates may often be used to prepare population projections for a given region, and commonly low variant, medium variant, and high variant projections are also prepared.................

About the Author

Sujay Rao Mandavilli is an IT professional (Governance Risk and Compliance) (Still practising as of 2024; Served major clients such as Tata Group, Mahindra Group, NECAM, Verizon and BAT, and also previously worked in IBM) and a born-again Anthropologist, researcher, and post-colonial thinker with major contributions to various fields of Anthropology and Social Sciences. He completed his Masters in Anthropology from the prestigious Indira Gandhi National Open University in New Delhi, India in 2020 with a first class. He has made major contributions to Anthropological Economics, the Sociology of Science, theories of socio-cultural change, Identity theory, Historiography, language dynamics, Indo-European studies, the Aryan Problem, and the identity of the Harappans. He has also contributed greatly to scientific method, and the philosophy of science. His hypothesis is that most fields of Social sciences which are based on a study on social and cultural variables, are based on old Eurocentric paradigms, and that better theories can only come from intellectual multipolarity, and Ethnographic data collected from different parts of the world. He believes this will lead to better scientific research, and greatly boost scientific output in different parts of the world that have hitherto lagged behind the West in scientific research. He has also attempted to synthesize Anthropological theory with other fields of Social Sciences such as Economics and Pedagogy, generating several new paradigms as a result. He strongly believes that the ‘Globalization of Science’, with a particular emphasis on the social sciences, must become one of the major movements of the Twenty-first century. He has called for an "Indian Enlightenment" as well as similar renaissances in the developing world through a horizontal collaboration among developing nations. He has published over seventy core research papers, and six books. All papers have again been republished through Social Sciences Research Network or SSRN. He is the Founder-Director of the Institute for the Study of the Globalization of Science (ISGOS) (Registered in India as the Globalization of Science Trust) which is has already started empaneling a group of researchers and scientists to plan its next course of action. In 2023, he launched the "Scholars and intellectuals for mankind" (SCHIMA) forum, which is reaching out to scholars and intellectuals from throughout the world to draft a common agenda. In 2024, he also created the blog "Abhilasha: This is not Utopia" to discuss burning and pressing issues of the day, particularly in relation to science, knowledge and society.

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