Population populism: What led to the faster decline in fertility in recent decades?

Over-population concerns in India have a very long history and continue to persist. The second half of the last century experienced a faster population growth of over two per cent per annum with legitimate population concerns.

Even in the late 19th century, when the population was growing merely at 0.5 per cent or less per annum and its total size was a little over 200 million, the British considered India overpopulated.

However, visible changes were noticed in bringing down fertility level towards the end of last century and in the two decades of the 21st century. India reached a near replacement level fertility of 2.2 per cent by 2018.

At the same time, the population momentum (children born in the past coming to marriageable age) will result in continued population growth for the next few more decades before the population growth rates achieves zero level.

The important question, therefore, is: What led to the faster decline in fertility in recent decades? There are three broad routes of fertility transition and all the three, have been to some extent, experimented in India.

Fertility transition through social development and women’s empowerment was the success story of Kerala and is the example from most of the western world.

The other route was effective service delivery, particularly of family planning services. Several states in India achieved success under this category. Tamil Nadu was the fore-runner.

Another route was imposing strong incentives and disincentives. A few states in India tried electoral disincentives for some period in the past, but their success was not very evident as compared to other states.

Although population concerns in India are not completely misplaced, the effect of any serious measures at this time on bringing down the actual population size will be minimal due to population momentum. Moreover, the most important route to bring down fertility rate is most likely to be efficient delivery of services.

This is the fifth in a series of stories on Uttar Pradesh and Assam's draft population bill. Read the fourth part here

Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth