NFHS-5 Data Busts Right-Wing Myth of Indian Vegetarianism
May 29, 2022
Introduction:
(Janata Weekly) Non-vegetarian food consumers have increased in India, including in Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled states like Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, as per data released by the recent National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5).
This is significant because right-wing supremacists have been peddling the fase narrative that non-vegetarians are a small minority in India. In fact, it is based on this false narrative that state administrations have attempted to remove eggs from mid-day meal plans, and non-veg food vendors from the streets. However, latest health data shows that more people are joining an already significant non-vegetarian population.
Groups across India were surveyed from 2019 to 2021 owing to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, compared to the 10-year gap between NFHS-3 and NFHS-4, the recent report was published only after a gap of five years.
More meat-lovers in Gujarat
As per the data, non-veg eaters in BJP-led Gujarat increased by at least seven percentage points over five years. As many as 39 percent of 33,343 surveyed women and 51 percent of 4,957 surveyed men confirmed eating fish or chicken or similar meat. These percentages are higher than the NFHS-4 data (2015-16) when 30.8 percent of 22,932 surveyed women and 43.5 percent of 5,567 surveyed men said they consumed non-veg.
Moreover, by 2019-21, 2.4 percent women (around 800 people) and 2.1 percent men (104 people) consumed such non-vegetarian food daily. Another 17.8 percent women (5,935 people) and 18.5 percent men (917 people) ate the food weekly, while 18.6 percent women (6,208 people) and 30.3 percent men (1,502 people) ate it occasionally.
Number of Americans who believe in God dips to new low: Gallup
A large majority (81 percent) of Americans say they believe in God, based on the poll conducted May 2-22, but that number has dipped 6 points from a consistent 87 percent from 2013-2017.
Over 90 percent of Americans said they believed in God from 1944 to 2011, the number stabilizing at a high of 98 percent from 1944 through the 1960s.
About 17 percent of American adults told Gallup that they do not believe in God, while the remaining 2 percent said they were unsure.
The Gallup Values and Beliefs poll found that the decrease in theism has been driven by young adults and those on the political left. Both groups’ belief in God has dropped by 10 percent or more compared to the 2013-2017 average for their demographics.
Quote:
Liberals (62 percent), young adults (68 percent) and Democrats (72 percent) gave significantly lower rates of belief in God, while conservatives (94 percent) and Republicans (92 percent) gave the highest.
India to surpass China as most populous country in 2023, U.N. report says
July 11, 2022
NEW DELHI, July 11 (Reuters) - India is set to surpass China as the world's most populous country in 2023, with each counting more than 1.4 billion residents this year, a United Nations report said on Monday, warning that high fertility would challenge economic growth.
The world's population, estimated to reach 8 billion by Nov. 15 this year, could grow to 8.5 billion in 2030, and 10.4 billion in 2100, as the pace of mortality slows, said the report released on World Population Day.
India's population was 1.21 billion in 2011, according to the domestic census, which is conducted once a decade. The government had deferred the 2021 census due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The world's population was growing at its slowest pace since 1950, having fallen below 1% in 2020, UN estimates showed.
In 2021, the average fertility of the world’s population stood at 2.3 births per woman over a lifetime, having fallen from about 5 births in 1950. Global fertility is projected to decline further to 2.1 births per woman by 2050.
UNITED NATIONS -- The United Nations estimated Monday that the world’s population will reach 8 billion on Nov. 15 and that India will replace China as the world’s most populous nation next year.
In a report released on World Population Day, the U.N. also said global population growth fell below 1% in 2020 for the first time since 1950.
According to the latest U.N. projections, the world’s population could grow to around 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and a peak of around 10.4 billion during the 2080s. It is forecast to remain at that level until 2100.
The report says more than half the projected increase in population up to 2050 will be concentrated in just eight countries: Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Tanzania.
The report, “World Population Prospects 2022,” puts the world's population at 7.942 billion now and forecasts it will reach 8 billion in mid-November
U.S. life expectancy down for second-straight year, fueled by covid-19
Source: Washington Post
Life expectancy in the United States fell in 2021 for the second year in a row, reflecting the merciless toll exacted by covid-19 on the nation’s health, according to a federal report released Wednesday. This is the biggest continuous decline in life expectancy at birth since the beginning of the Roaring Twenties. Americans can now expect to live as long as they did in 1996, according to provisional data released by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Overall, life expectancy dropped from 77 years in 2020 to 76.1 years in 2021.
The biggest decline was among Native Americans, whose life expectancy in 2021 plummeted to 65, the age of eligibility for Medicare; in a single year, Native Americans forfeited nearly two years of life. White people had the second-biggest drop, losing a full year of life expectancy, while Black people lost 0.7 years. “In 2021, things should have been far better,” said Noreen Goldman, a Princeton University demographer who has studied socioeconomic disparities in health for years and whose research focuses on the pandemic’s effect on life expectancy.
“There’s some countries whose life expectancy in ’21 was higher than pre-pandemic. They suffered in 2020, and by ’21, they had more than recovered. That’s not us.” The federal report highlights two key things, said Reed Tuckson, co-founder of the Black Coalition Against Covid. The first: that many of these deaths were unnecessary and preventable, Tuckson said. The second: The extraordinary efforts made by the Black community to overcome the excess burden of death that plagued it at the beginning of the pandemic so it could “save itself.”
“We had to come from so much further back,” said Tuckson, an internist and former D.C. commissioner of public health. “As disease has progressed through society the last couple of years, that gap has closed. Simultaneously, White America, particularly in red states, is not as compliant with guidance. Leadership was much less focused. And we’re probably seeing the results of that.”
To me, from an environmentalist perspective, a shrinking population is a good thing. Less negative pressure on the environment because there are fewer people around creating negative effects.
Even from an economic perspective, accumulated wealth being split among fewer people means more net wealth per person. Of course, that leaves aside issues concerning the concentration of wealth.
Of course, such demographic changes do involve other negative issues. An excess of retirement age individuals in relation to working age population can have obvious problems. This can be offset by an increase in productivity due to mechanization and robotization, but there is no guarantee as to how fortuitous the timing of such productivity gains may be.
Caltrek. I agree with you...Most of the pressure is in Africa and parts of Asia of course and that part of the world could use some serious birth control within my opinion.
We'd be better off with capping the world population at 2-3 billion.
Christians Could Become a Minority in The U.S. Within Decades by Tom Hale
September 15, 2022
Introduction:
(IFL Science) If current trends continue, Christians could soon become a minority in the US within just a few decades, according to a new report. Social trends like this are notoriously hard to predict, but it's evident that the number of people following Christianity in the US has been slipping since the 1970s – and little seems to be stopping the demise.
In 1972, up to 90 percent of Americans identified as Christian. By 2020, that number had slipped to about 64 percent, while around 30 percent reported being religiously unaffiliated and all other religions – including Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism – accounted for just 6 percent of the population.
A new report by Pew Research has looked to see how this trend might continue under a few different scenarios. There are numerous factors that will influence this future, such as birth rates and migration patterns, but one of the most important is the rates of “religious switching” whereby people no longer identify with the religion they grew up with.
Under the first scenario, where no one in the US changes their religion after 2020, Christianity could claw onto a majority of 54 percent of the population by 2070. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated would remain a substantial minority at 34 percent.
If religious switching among young Americans continued at current rates, Christians would slip below 50 percent of the population by 2060, accounting for 46 percent of the population in 2070. They would still be the largest religious group in the US, however.
caltrek’s comment: This could account for paranoia among White Christians regarding replacement theory. One possible answer might be to allow more immigration from highly Christian Latin American countries. From a reactionary White Christian’s perspective this may not be desirable because such persons would not be White, and would tend to be Catholic. Catholics, for many Protestants and independent based Christians, can be seen as almost as bad or worse than atheists.
The Human Race at Eight Billion
by Stef W. Kight and Tory Lysik
November 15, 2022
Introduction:
(Axios) Eight billion humans are living on planet Earth — a huge milestone officially projected for and being recognized Tuesday by the U.N.
Why it matters: People are living longer, with generally better access to health care, food, clean water and sanitation than in past generations. A smaller share of humans live in extreme poverty.
• There are still challenges — ongoing ramifications from the pandemic, a record number of forcibly displaced people and worsening climate change.
“It is a momentous milestone for humanity," Natalia Kanem, executive director of the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), told reporters last month.
• "Some express concerns that our world is overpopulated with far too many people and insufficient resources to sustain their lives. I am here to say clearly, that the sheer number of human lives is not a cause for fear."
Taiwan military has a fertility problem: As China fears grow, its recruitment pool shrinks
Updated 2:50 AM EST, Sat December 17, 2022
Taipei, Taiwan(CNN) Taiwan has noticed a hole in its defense plans that is steadily getting bigger. And it's not one easily plugged by boosting the budget or buying more weapons.
The island democracy of 23.5 million is facing an increasing challenge in recruiting enough young men to meet its military targets and its Interior Ministry has suggested the problem is -- at least in part -- due to its stubbornly low birth rate.
Taiwan's population fell for the first time in 2020, according to the ministry, which warned earlier this year that the 2022 military intake would be the lowest in a decade and that a continued drop in the youth population would pose a "huge challenge" for the future.
That's bad news at a time when Taiwan is trying to bolster its forces to deter any potential invasion by China, whose ruling Communist Party has been making increasingly belligerent noises about its determination to "reunify" with the self-governed island -- which it has never controlled -- by force if necessary.
And the outlook has darkened further with the release of a new report by Taiwan's National Development Council projecting that by 2035 the island can expect roughly 20,000 fewer births per year than the 153,820 it recorded in 2021. By 2035, Taiwan will also overtake South Korea as the jurisdiction with the world's lowest birth rate, the report added.
We Are Not Prepared for the Coming Surge of Babies
The post-Roe rise in births in the U.S. will be concentrated in some of the worst states for infant and maternal health. Plans to improve these outcomes are staggeringly thin.
By Melissa Jeltsen
December 16, 2022
A typical pregnancy lasts about 40 weeks. Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that created a constitutional right to abortion, was reversed less than six months ago. This means the U.S. is currently at a unique inflection point in the history of reproductive rights: early enough to see the immediate effects of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—closed clinics, a rapidly shifting map of abortion access—but too soon to measure the rise in babies born to mothers who did not wish to have them. Many of these babies will be born in states that already have the worst maternal- and child-health outcomes in the nation. Although the existence of these children is the goal of the anti-abortion movement, America is unprepared to adequately care for them and the people who give birth to them.
Time_Traveller wrote: ↑Sat Dec 17, 2022 10:57 am Taiwan military has a fertility problem: As China fears grow, its recruitment pool shrinks
Updated 2:50 AM EST, Sat December 17, 2022
Taipei, Taiwan(CNN) Taiwan has noticed a hole in its defense plans that is steadily getting bigger. And it's not one easily plugged by boosting the budget or buying more weapons.
The island democracy of 23.5 million is facing an increasing challenge in recruiting enough young men to meet its military targets and its Interior Ministry has suggested the problem is -- at least in part -- due to its stubbornly low birth rate.
Taiwan's population fell for the first time in 2020, according to the ministry, which warned earlier this year that the 2022 military intake would be the lowest in a decade and that a continued drop in the youth population would pose a "huge challenge" for the future.
That's bad news at a time when Taiwan is trying to bolster its forces to deter any potential invasion by China, whose ruling Communist Party has been making increasingly belligerent noises about its determination to "reunify" with the self-governed island -- which it has never controlled -- by force if necessary.
And the outlook has darkened further with the release of a new report by Taiwan's National Development Council projecting that by 2035 the island can expect roughly 20,000 fewer births per year than the 153,820 it recorded in 2021. By 2035, Taiwan will also overtake South Korea as the jurisdiction with the world's lowest birth rate, the report added.
Time_Traveller wrote: ↑Sat Dec 17, 2022 10:57 am Taiwan military has a fertility problem: As China fears grow, its recruitment pool shrinks
Updated 2:50 AM EST, Sat December 17, 2022
Taipei, Taiwan(CNN) Taiwan has noticed a hole in its defense plans that is steadily getting bigger. And it's not one easily plugged by boosting the budget or buying more weapons.
The island democracy of 23.5 million is facing an increasing challenge in recruiting enough young men to meet its military targets and its Interior Ministry has suggested the problem is -- at least in part -- due to its stubbornly low birth rate.
Taiwan's population fell for the first time in 2020, according to the ministry, which warned earlier this year that the 2022 military intake would be the lowest in a decade and that a continued drop in the youth population would pose a "huge challenge" for the future.
That's bad news at a time when Taiwan is trying to bolster its forces to deter any potential invasion by China, whose ruling Communist Party has been making increasingly belligerent noises about its determination to "reunify" with the self-governed island -- which it has never controlled -- by force if necessary.
And the outlook has darkened further with the release of a new report by Taiwan's National Development Council projecting that by 2035 the island can expect roughly 20,000 fewer births per year than the 153,820 it recorded in 2021. By 2035, Taiwan will also overtake South Korea as the jurisdiction with the world's lowest birth rate, the report added.
