Forbes India
India’s total fertility rate (TFR), the average number of children a woman would bear in her lifetime, has held steady at 2.0 for two successive National Family Health Surveys, NFHS-5 (2019-21) and NFHS-6 (2023-24). While the number is below the replacement level of 2.1—the level of childbearing at which the population exactly replaces itself—18 states had already slipped below it in the 2019-2021 cycle, well before the national average arrived there.Of all the states and Union Territories surveyed, only two, Bihar and Meghalaya, sit above the replacement level, at TFRs of 2.76 and 2.5 respectively. Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Manipur are exactly at 2.1, while Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh are a notch under at 2.That gap between the national average and the states exposes just how much the aggregate TFR has historically been dragged upwards by a small cluster of high-fertility states. Bihar’s TFR stood at 3.41 in NFHS-4 (2015-16), Meghalaya at 3.04, Uttar Pradesh at 2.74, and Jharkhand at 2.55. Their gradual decline is perhaps the single biggest driver of India’s national average stabilising at 2.0. Had these states converged earlier, India would have crossed the threshold sooner.Meanwhile, much of southern and western India crossed that line long ago. Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Gujarat, Delhi, Punjab and Andhra Pradesh have all been below 2.1 since at least NFHS-4, with several recording sub-replacement fertility even in NFHS-3 (2005-06). At the extreme end, Sikkim recorded a TFR of just 1.1, lower than Japan, while Goa, Jammu & Kashmir, and Chandigarh are all below 1.5, fertility rates more commonly associated with southern Europe than South Asia.The rural-urban divergence is also narrowing sharply, as rural India has reached a fertility level of 2.1 for the first time in NFHS-6. Urban India’s TFR tipped below the replacement level in 2005-06 and touched 1.6 in 2023-24.
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