Mint Explainer: What falling total fertility rate will mean for India

livemint.com:

The Lancet, a weekly medical journal. It is already below the universally accepted replacement rate of 2.1 – the study estimated the rate at 1.91 for 2021. TFR refers to the average number of children born to a female throughout her reproductive lifespan (from 15 to 49 years of age).

A survey carried out by the government had similarly estimated that India’s TFR was already below the replacement rate. The fifth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) carried out between 2019 and 2021 estimated the country’s TFR at 2, with the rate for urban areas at 1.6 and for rural areas at 2.1. A declining TFR means fewer babies will be born in future, and that results in a slower growth of the population before it begins to decline.

The article in The Lancet, based on a study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a population health research organization based at the University of Washington School of Medicine, estimates that the number of live births in India in 2050 at 13.03 million, against 22.39 million in 2021. And, the numbers will decline further to 3.79 million in 2100. Mint explains how the TFR impacts the demographic profile of a nation and its economy.

Since it is an indicator of the number of children likely to be born to a female, it helps policymakers and demographers to make projections of how the population of a community, region and nation will change over a period of time. It is an important input for deciding policy interventions that will be required to alter the pace of population growth and also for planning for the creation of infrastructure and production of food crops. It also helps countries estimate changes that would occur in the labour force and in deciding policies towards