The Core

Wow....

"Just eight countries are projected to be responsible for more than half the world's population increase by 2050.

One of them is India, which is set to overtake China as the most populous country in the world next year.

Pakistan and the Philippines are also on the list, and the remaining five are all in Africa: Nigeria, Tanzania, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Egypt. "

Other forecasts say India is already on a decline.   I thought I heard it here:

Is demography destiny?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001326k

I caught this headline, that is probably more accurate than my memory:
 
https://www.economist.com/asia/2021/12/02/indias-population-will-start-to-shrink-sooner-than-expected

WHEN SOMETHING happens earlier than expected, Indians say it has been “preponed”. On November 24th India’s health ministry revealed that a resolution to one of its oldest and greatest preoccupations will indeed be preponed. Some years ahead of UN predictions, and its own government targets, India’s total fertility rate—the average number of children that an Indian woman can expect to bear in her lifetime—has fallen below 2.1, which is to say below the “replacement” level at which births balance deaths. In fact it dropped to just 2.0 overall, and to 1.6 in India’s cities, says the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), a country-wide health check. That is a 10% drop from the previous survey, just five years ago.

Ok thats different to what I said, but the sense is the same.

China is shrinking, so India being bigger than China sounds shocking but perhaps isnt?

The biggest takeaway I took form the Rethink, was that in the next 20 years its Africa that will continue to expand, no where else.

Unfortunately the program starts with a quote from Elon Musk, that kinda spoils its believability.

At the peak population.....
Few females carried pregnancies to term, and the ones that did seemed to simply forget about their babies.

The few secluded spaces housed a population called, "the beautiful ones." The females—and few males—inside the space didn't breed or fight or do anything but eat and groom and sleep. The beautiful ones had completely lost touch with social behaviors, including having sex or caring for their young.

A slightly chilling read (the above is an edited excerpt);

How 1960s Mouse Utopias Led to Grim Predictions for Future of Humanity | Smithsonian Magazine

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-mouse-utopias-1960s-led-grim-predictions-humans-180954423/