In the small talk that affluent middle-aged Indian men tend to have in their living rooms over a cup of tea, they often blame our huge population as the root cause of all our problems, social, economic and political. . Their solution is population control. In their minds, it’s a closing argument. The mother of all solutions. The problem is that, like most lazy arguments, it’s wrong.
The recently released 2019-2021 National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) shows why. According to the survey, India’s total fertility rate is now 2. It was 3.2 at the turn of the century and 2.2 in 2015-2016 when the last such survey was conducted. This means that on average, 100 women had 320 children during their reproductive years (15-49 years). It fell to 220 and now sits at 200.
Therefore, India’s fertility rate is already below the replacement level of 2.1. If, on average, 100 women have 210 children during their childbearing years and this continues over decades, a country’s population eventually stabilizes. The additional fraction of 0.1 essentially represents women who die before reaching childbearing age.
The interesting thing is that in urban India, the total fertility rate is 1.6, well below replacement level. In rural India it is 2.1, just equal to replacement level. When it comes to state comparisons, Bihar with a total fertility rate of 3 is at the bottom and Sikkim with a rate of 1.1 is at the top.
As the NFHS-5 points out: “The number of children per woman decreases with the level of education of women. Women with no schooling have an average of 2.8 children, compared to 1.8 children for women with 12 or more years of schooling. According to the survey data, only 55% of Bihar women in the age bracket of 15-49 are literate.
What does that mean? Will the Indian population begin to stabilize immediately? The answer is no. This is mainly because the number of women who will continue to reach childbearing age will increase for some time, simply because of higher fertility rates in the past. Also, with access to better medical facilities, people will live longer. Therefore, the Indian population will start to stabilize in about three decades.
Nevertheless, population growth will continue to slow. Indeed, as the NFHS-5 points out: “Nearly one in four (23%) currently married women aged 15-49 would like to have another child… Like women, just over one in four ( 26%) is currently married. aged 15 to 49 want to have another child. This tells us that almost three quarters of married couples aged 15 to 49 want to have only one child. This indicates that the total fertility rate will fall further in the years to come.
A declining fertility rate has economic consequences. As Amlan Roy writes in Demographics Unraveled: How Demographics Affect and Influence Every Aspect of Economics, Finance and Policy: “Fewer children per household leads to greater investments per child, greater freedom for women in enter the formal labor market and greater household savings. for old age. National economic gain is a demographic dividend [emphasis in the original].”
Roy’s argument is that as family size decreases, more women take paid jobs. This increase in income, then in expenditure, contributes to economic growth. There is another factor at work here. As Roy writes, “the labor force temporarily grows faster than the dependent population, freeing up resources to invest in economic development and family well-being.”
In the case of India, the fertility rate has fallen over the years and at the same time the working age population has grown at a faster rate than the overall population, but has this leads more women to gainful employment?
According to NFHS-5, one in four women in the 15-49 age group are employed. As far as men are concerned, almost three out of four men are employed. This is more or less similar to the findings of the 2015-16 NFHS-4. Moreover, rather worryingly, the more educated a woman is, the less likely she is to be employed. About a third of women with less than five years of education are employed. This figure drops to 18.4% for women with 10 to 11 years of schooling, then jumps slightly to 21.5% for women with at least 12 years of schooling.
Clearly, there is enough evidence to suggest that India’s demographic dividend is not going as planned. While women are better educated and have fewer babies, they do not hold paid jobs.
At the same time, the gap between working-age population growth and overall population growth, after peaking in the late 1990s to mid-2010s, has narrowed over the years. This difference is expected to last another two decades.
In conclusion, it is worth recalling what Roy writes: “Reducing high fertility can create opportunities for economic growth if the right kinds of education, health and labor market policies are in place. .” And we have very little time left to exploit the age profiles of our population to our advantage. Of course, that wouldn’t stop men from making small talk about population control in their living rooms. How boring would the world be if it weren’t possible to discuss simplistic solutions over a cup of tea and some cookies on a hot summer afternoon?
Vivek Kaul is the author of “Bad Money”.
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