Fertility transition
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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