China implemented population policies in the 1970s which reduced its fertility rate from 6 to 2.5 by 2015, while India's birth rate fell from 4.7 to 2.5 over the same period. Some states took pronatalist approaches due to lack of education and beliefs that population isn't a problem and governments can afford it, but coercive population policies limit individual freedom and have caused issues like coerced abortion, favoring male children, child brides, and tensions between communism and democracy. Infant mortality has declined while HIV/AIDS remains a major global problem, infecting and killing millions each year.
