South India facing population challenges

The world’s two most populous countries are now grappling with demographic challenges. India’s population growth rate has slowed, and the heads of two states in the country’s south — where the fertility rate has sharply dropped — recently urged families to have more children. Leaders are concerned that slowing population growth in southern India could lead to less representation in the federal legislature.

Meanwhile, China’s well-documented birth rate troubles have seemingly gotten so severe that government workers are now calling up women and asking them to get pregnant, the South China Morning Post reported. The number of kindergartens in the country dropped by 5% in the last year, the second consecutive annual decline.