Shrinking families helped India grow in 1980s-90s

Shrinking families helped India grow in 1980s-90s

News:

1. United nations recently released report regarding the population and fertility rates across the world.

Important Facts:

2. About the report:

• The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)’s released its flagship State of the World Population Report 2017 titled “Worlds Apart: Reproductive Health and Rights in an Age of Inequality”.

3. Findings of the report:
4. India’s Case:

• India’s population has doubled since 1971, from 566 million to 1.35 billion in 2016. The total fertility rate in urban India has already fallen below replacement levels of 2.1.
• India’s family size has steadily declined from 5.2 children per family in 1971 to 2.3 in 2016, which means the family size itself has fallen from 7.2 to 4.3.
• In India, 27 percent of girls were married under the age of 18, against a global average of 28 percent.

• Inter-state disparities: Although average total fertility for the whole country is 2.3 births per woman, it is above 3 in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, and below replacement level in Maharashtra and West Bengal, and the four southernmost states.
• Gaps remain: The desired fertility rate of 1.8 in India is lower than the fertility rate of 2.3, which means many women are still having more children than they want.
• The shrinking size of families in India contributed to India’s economic growth in the 1980s and 1990s.
• India deserves special mention because it has, along with Bangladesh, El Salvador, Nepal, Myanmar and Nicaragua, fertility rates at near replacement level, despite having lower per capita incomes than other countries.
• Fertility and contraception: Like in Bangladesh and Indonesia in the 1970s and 1980s, fertility declined in India even in poor, rural areas when more women gained access to modern methods of contraception under government-run campaigns and improved availability of contraceptives services, including methods to space children.
• Gender wage gap: India, coupled with Pakistan, showed the largest gender wage gap in the South Asia region in 2016. The ratio of female to male income equality (higher the better) was just above 0.2 for both countries.
• The best regional performers were Nepal and Bhutan, with a ratio close to 0.6.
• According to the UNFPA graph measuring 90 countries, the only country to have a worse wage gap than India and Pakistan was

5. Challenges to fertility:

• Low-fertility countries: Women face challenges in exercising their reproductive rights because of economic hardship, a lack of affordable housing, high childcare costs, and uncertain labour markets.
• Developed countries: Here fertility is affected by an increasing share of older people in their populations and higher associated health-care costs, as well as a shrinking labour force.
• Wars: In some countries where fertility has been steadily declining, economic shocks, wars and other crises can cause fertility rates to dip suddenly as couples choose to delay having children and then rebound after the crisis, when stability and security return.
• High-fertility countries: Here economic, social, institutional and geographic barriers may prevent women from accessing quality family planning information and supplies. Together, these barriers stop millions of people from exercising their reproductive rights.

6. Way forward:

• Develop and invest in family planning programmes that aim to achieve zero unmet need for family planning services no later than 2030 to help attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
• Gender equality should be enshrined in all national policies and practices, and should be a central operating principle of all health-care systems.
• Consider conducting regular national reproductive rights “check-ups” to assess whether laws, policies, budgets, services, awareness campaigns and other activities are aligned with reproductive rights, as defined by the International Conference on Population and Development.
• Review demographic policies to ensure they enhance reproductive rights and empower individuals to realize their own fertility goals.