India's fertility rate dips, but the decline is faster in Bangladesh, Nepal

India’s fertility rate declined to below the replacement rate, but Nepal’s and Bangladesh’s declined faster between 1990 and 2020.

Replacement level is the level of fertility at which a population replaces itself exactly from one generation to the next. The United Nations’ (UN’s) prescribed fertility rate is 2.1 births per woman.

On Tuesday, data from China’s National Statistics Bureau showed that the country’s population shrank to 1.41 billion in 2022. If data from World Population Prospects is to be believed, then India, with a population of 1.412 billion in 2022, would be the most populous country in the world.

However, an earlier analysis by Business Standard found that the UN overestimated India’s population by 41.1 million, compared to India’s official Technical Group on Population Projections (TGPP) estimates. Even if India were to follow TGPP’s calculations, it would surpass China in 2025.

A significant reason is India’s higher fertility rates or the number of children born per woman. A comparison with neighbouring countries shows that although India’s fertility rates had halved between 1990 and 2020, the fall in fertility rates was faster in Nepal and Bangladesh.

Even as India’s fertility rate declined to 2 — a level much below the UN’s prescribed fertility rate (of 2.1 births per woman) — it was not the only country in the sub-continent to experience this fall.

India’s fertility rate declined from 4.05 in 1990, Nepal’s went down from 5.2. And, Bangladesh’s declined from 4.5. The decline in China was by a similar proportion to India’s, as its fertility rate reduced by 49 per cent from 2.51 in 1990 to 1.28 in 2020.

In the past decade, however, India’s decline in fertility rates has been faster than neighbouring countries. China was the only country which experienced an even larger reduction in fertility rates between 2010 and 2020.

A rural-urban comparison shows that even though fertility rates in rural areas declined much faster between 2005-06 and 2019-21, the rural fertility rate at 2.14 was much higher than the urban rate of 1.63.