Eli5:Why do countries in Asia have such high populations and high population densities?
In: 6
India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, South China have reasonably good terrain, long planting seasons, regular rainfall and/or good river systems. (or even consider the Nile river and Egypt) This kind of land can grow a lot of food to support their population. In agriculturally intensive economies that are not rich, children are an asset because they start helping out on the farm or cooking very early (like 7-10 year old). So more children, more secure food supply. Add to that modern medicine have resulted in much longer average lifetimes in the last 70 years. This leads to very large population growth over the last 50-60 years.
Urbanization due to industrialization and greater access to education (especially women) almost always leads to smaller families and fewer children. Children are now more of a burden as they go to school until they’re 17-18 and it costs a lot more to feed and educate them.
So, in countries like China, Japan, S Korea which have rapidly industrialized birth rates have fallen off the cliff and populations have either peaked or very close to peaking. Bangladesh and India have seen birth rates fall dramatically and probably hit peak population within 40-50 years if trends continue.
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