The recent decline in the fertility rate
in India seems to have affected the Asian world a great deal. For the second most populous country in the
world, it is indeed a dramatic
achievement.
According to a new study, since
1990, India's total fertility rate has
dropped from more than 5.3 issues
per woman to 3.6. This was claimed
by Pravin and Leela Visaria of the
Gujarat Institute for Development
and Research in Ahmedabad, in their
Study, India's Population in Transition.
"India's demographic changes and economic ups and downs are felt throughout Asia and the world," the report emphasises. India's population
of 931 million, which is second to
China's 1.2 billion, is expected to
exceed one billion by the year 2001.
The authors credit the perceivable decline in the fertility rate to
India's national family planning programme, as well as a number of
socio-economic changes like late marriages, increased literacy, urbanisation, industrialisation and the communication and technology revolution.
They point out that regression in
the fertility rate had been obscured
by a corresponding decrease in mortality rates that had led life expectancy to rise from about 50 years in the early '70s, to about 60 years in the '90s.
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