Declining TFR

Introduction:

Total fertility rate (TFR) indicates the average number of children expected to be born to a woman during her reproductive span of 15-49 years.

The government’s Sample Registration System in 22 states shows that TFR for India declined to 2.2 in 2017 after being stable at 2.3 between 2013 and 2016.

Reasons for falling fertility rate:

1. Social factor: are all contributing to a falling TFR.
   • Higher education
   • Increased mobility
   • late marriage
   • financially independent women
   • Overall prosperity 
2. Female Education:
   • Bihar, with the highest TFR of 3.2, had the maximum percentage of illiterate women at 26.8%.
   • Kerala, where the literate women at  99.3%, had among the lowest fertility rates.
3. Family Planning contributed to less TFR.
   • Use of Contraceptives
   • Increased tubectomies
   • relatively lesser vasectomies
4. Economic Constraints: have discouraged aspiring parents to reduce the number of kids.
   • Urbanization
   • Reduced joint family system
   • Increasing nuclear and single-parent families
   • Higher cost of living in urban areas

Issues involved:

1. Dependency ratio:
   • Proportion of workers rises sharply, even as the proportion of dependents falls.
   • India’s dependency ratio is low at 0.6, compared with the developed countries.
   • Ratio is going to decline further with fertility rates continuing to fall.
2. Demographic Dividend:
   • Youthful, dynamic and productive workforce dominate India compared to rest of the world.
   • Limited employment opportunities may contribute to increased poverty, hunger, malnutrition, poorer health, lower educational outcomes, child labour, unsupervised and abandoned children, and rising rates of domestic violence.
3. Health Constraints.
4. Education constraints:
   • Shortage of high quality faculty.
   • Poor incentive structures.
   • Lack of good regulation.

Way forward:

• Health and education parameters need to be improved substantially to make the Indian workforce efficient and skilled.
• Enhance, support and coordinate private sector initiatives for skill development through appropriate Public-Private Partnership (PPP) models.
• Focus on the unorganized or informal sector workforce.
• Measures should have pan Indian presence.
• Build human capital, which is key to supporting economic growth, ending extreme poverty, and creating more inclusive societies.
• New technology could be exploited to accelerate the pace of building human capital, including massive open online courses and virtual classrooms.