Link to India Growth Story – Progress, Myths, Looking Ahead – 2 of 5

So far, covered Life expectancy, IMR, Child Mortality Rate, and Immunization Reach in previous parts. Let’s take a look at Maternal Deaths, Birth Rate, Total Fertility Rate, and Population in this third installment.

Number of maternal deaths, as per World Bank, refers to the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and site of the pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management but not from accidental or incidental causes. Maternal deaths went down to 45000 in 2015 from 152000 in 1990. Good progress but still good amount of ground to cover here. Most of these must be preventable ones with precautionary steps.

Source: The World Bank: Health, Nutrition, Population: Health at a Glance

How does Improved health (IMR, Child mortality rate, maternal deaths), literacy, and income levels, impact population growth? Will the population continue to increase at the same rate or expect to slow down and stabilize? What would be the population of India 2100? Let’s look at some predictions.

Birth Rate, as per World Bank, crude birth rate indicates the number of live births occurring during the year, per 1,000 population estimated at midyear.

Source: The World Bank: Health, Nutrition, Population: Health at a Glance

Similar to other developing countries, birth rate is trending down, which reflects increased survival rate of children, due to impactful reduction in IMR, and child mortality rate. We need to look at this along with Total Fertility rate (TFR). As per World Bank, TFR represents the number of children that would be born to a woman if she were to live to the end of her childbearing years and bear children in accordance with age-specific fertility rates of the specified year. Fertility rate has more than halved from 1960 to 2016, 5.9 to 2.3. The need to have more kids has come down drastically due to improvement in IMR and child mortality rate and as the population moves towards increased income levels. While we still have good percentage of population in poverty & low-income brackets, even with slower progress (of course, we would like to see a faster rate of change) will bring in dramatic impact on population growth – reduced fertility rate and population stabilization.

Source: The World Bank: Health, Nutrition, Population: Health at a Glance

While the national average for TFR stands at 2.3 in 2016 (2.1 in 2018, see TOI link), good number of states have TFR at or below replacement levels. Looking at the data across states, cultures, and religion, it shows clearly that it is health, education, and income level that decides the fertility rate and not religion.

Myth Buster: This data is not going to be good news for those who keep spreading the fear that Muslims population will keep going up and take over Hindu population in India OR those who believe some religions don’t believe in family planning. Before we talk about India, let’s take a look at Iran, and Malaysia. Their TFR is better than India. As far as back in 1980, Iran was at TRF of ~7, now it stands at 1.7 (less than USA). Saudi Arabia TFR has come down from 7.2 à 2.5. Oh, but what about Indian Muslims? See State Key to Fertility Rates not Religion from TOI news link. Gist of the article is that cultural and geographical factors, and level of development of different states determines how many children a woman has than her religion. In some states Muslim TFR is lower than Hindus, and in 10 states Muslim TFR is at or below replacement level. In Tamil Nadu, TFR stands at 1.7 for both Hindus and Muslims. For Hindus, in 22 states, TFR is at or below replacement level. So, the underlying message is clear, Religion has nothing to do with TFR, it is income level, education, and access to contraceptives.

TFR going down, does that mean people are having less sex? Practicing celibacy and/or infrequent sex? Nope, that is not the case. What this means is that prevalence of contraceptives has gone up and enabling couples and women to decide when to have kids and how many to have. Contraceptive prevalence Data will make the religious heads worried, world is becoming full of sinners 😂

Source: UN Report on Contraceptive use trends 2015.

Except regions in Africa, contraceptives use is 50% or more in pretty much the rest of the world. Again, data reiterates the fact that birth rate is a factor of income level, education, and access and a not influenced by religion (India: 54%, US: 73%, Iran: 77%, China: 88%). There is still unmet needs of contraceptives and its usage is less in low income brackets. Improving income levels, and better access to contraceptives will bring TFR further down.

Considering all these, what would be the population of India and World in 2100? Let’s take a look at history on world population:

•        It took 130 years to go from 1 billion in 1800 to 2 billion in 1930
•        It took 30 years to reach 3 billion in 1960. Another 14 years to hit 4 billion in 1974
•        13 more years to cross 5 billion in 1987. 24 more years to cross 7 billion in 2011

 

Going back to 1950, India was at 370 million. We crossed 1 billion around 2000. We added another 300 million in 15 years.  If we go by past rate, 30% increase in 15 years, our population in 2100 would be ~3 billion. Did you pass out? Don’t worry, that is not going to be the case. Considering the trends in TFR, IMR, CMR, India’s population is expected to be around 1.5-1.6 billion in 2100, peaking to 1.7 billion in 2070. World population is expected to stabilize around 11 billion in 2100. At high level, this is how it is going to look:

•        2016: Asia: 4 billion; Africa: 1 billion; Europe: 1 billion; Americas: 1 billion
•         2100: Asia: 5 billion; Africa: 4 billion; Europe: 1 billion; Americas: 1 billion

 

[TO BE CONTINUED…]