India’s birth crisis: What the Lancet forecast of fertility rate dip to 1.29 by 2050 means

Subject: Geography

Section: Human Geo

Context:

A recent study published in The Lancet warns that India’s total fertility rate (TFR), or births per woman, will fall to 1.29 by 2050.

More on news:

By 2050, one in five Indians will be a senior citizen while there will be fewer younger people to take care of them.
India’s total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born per woman — is dipping irreversibly to 1.29, far lower than the replacement rate of 2.1.
This means a rapidly depleting working age population.
About Global Burden of Disease, Injuries and Risk Factors Study (GBD)-2021:
As per research estimates from the Global Burden of Disease, Injuries and Risk Factors Study (GBD)-2021, worldwide, too, the TFR has more than halved in the last 70 years – from around five children for each woman in 1950 to 2.2 children in 2021.
In India, the TFR was 6.18 in 1950 which reduced to 4.60 in 1980 and further declined to 1.91 in 2021.
China is already dealing with the demographic disadvantage of an aging population.
Both India and China together account for more than a third of the world’s population.
Total Fertility rate: The total fertility rate in a specific year is defined as the total number of children that would be born to each woman if she were to live to the end of her child-bearing years and give birth to children in alignment with the prevailing age-specific fertility rates.

Why fertility went down in India

Post-independence, there was a need to restrict the population.
So the Family Welfare Programme, including maternal and child health-related cash transfer inducements, were intended to convince people to have no more than two children.
Slowly that behavior change started showing up.
Infant mortality declined substantially (because of various maternal and child health-related programmes and successful immunization) meaning child survival was guaranteed.
With development, the intergenerational flow of wealth has reversed.
This means parents now do not receive much benefit from their children the way they used to. This has influenced their decision to have an additional child that would involve a substantial cost of bringing them up.
The other significant factor has clearly been the rise of female literacy and women’s participation in the workforce.
Career consciousness, financial returns and economic independence have meant that women are reconsidering their options of having a second child.
In the urban space, many women do not consider child-rearing as a must-do task, instead choosing not to have babies at all and even considering options like adoption.
This pattern is percolating to rural India too.

What are long-term consequences?

The consequences of fertility decline will be that the share of the elderly in the population will increase sharply.
By 2050 the share of senior citizens in India will be more than 20 per cent, that is one five people.
Challenges like labor force shortages and potential social imbalances due to gender preferences are likely to occur.

Declining trend worldwide

Researchers estimate that by 2050, 155 of 204 countries (76 percent of the world) will be below the replacement level of fertility.
The number of countries and territories below replacement level is predicted to further increase to 198 (97 per cent) by 2100.