India’s birth crisis: What the Lancet forecast of fertility rate dip to 1.29 by 2050 means
- March 25, 2024
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
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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.