Concerns raised with declining fertility rates in some states

Posted 11 Nov 2024

2 min read

Recently, Chief Ministers of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have raised concerns about the low fertility rates, slowing population growth in their respective states.

Fertility Rate in India

NFHS-5 in 2019-21 showed a decline in Total Fertility Rate (TFR) to 2.0, with TFR being the average number of children born to women during their child-bearing years.
- This is below replacement level fertility of 2.1, at which population can maintain its size across generations.
Decrease in fertility rates is not uniform across India with southern States and smaller northern States seeing a much sharper decrease in TFR.
- For instance, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh have TFR of 1.4 and 1.5 respectively, while Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have TFR of 2.7 and 3 respectively.

Factors behind declining fertility rates

Family Planning: Implementation of family planning policies and increase in its demand among married women from 66% in 2015-16 (NFHS-4) to 76% in 2019-21 (NFHS-5).
Educational Empowerment of Women: Consequent increase in labour market participation led to a higher opportunity cost for having more children.
Increasing Living Costs: Concerns about increasing cost of living and housing become barrier to having more children.

Concerns with decline in fertility rate

Ageing societies: Places significant social and economic pressures on government to increase expenditures on pension and health services.
- Increasing old age dependency ratio burdens young workers economically and emotionally.
Political Challenges: Potential loss of political representation of states having slow population growth after the expiry of current freeze on number of seats of Parliament in 2026.
Labour shortages: Declining fertility rate can create labour shortages. E.g. Japan.