YOU ARE having too many babies. For decades that crude message was drilled into the minds of Indians by their rulers, abetted by inept foreign donors. In the 1960s slogans on school buildings chided parents, telling them: “Two or three children, enough”. By the 1970s officials had taken a crueller turn, overseeing the sterilisation of millions of young adults, usually the poor, many forcibly. But when Indian school textbooks are reprinted this summer, they will carry a very different message. They will warn not of the dangers of having too many babies, but of the risks of having too few.
In several Indian states the TFR now matches the sputtering rates you find in rich European countries. Tamil Nadu, an industrialised state in the south, and West Bengal, a populous one in the east, each have the same fertility rate (1.3) as Finland. (Unsplash)
That’s because the world’s most populous country is experiencing a baby bust. India has a total fertility rate (TFR), a measure of children per woman, of 1.9 and falling. This is below the replacement rate, of 2.1 or so, needed for a stable long-term population. In several Indian states the TFR now matches the sputtering rates you find in rich European countries. Tamil Nadu, an industrialised state in the south, and West Bengal, a populous one in the east, each have the same fertility rate (1.3) as Finland. Maharashtra, a big western state encompassing Mumbai, is on a par with Norway (1.4). If you think of Indian demography, Scandinavia is not the natural reference point. Increasingly, it will be.
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India’s population will still continue to grow from its current tally of 1.45bn: it takes time for fewer births to translate into fewer people overall. But the number of births is already down by a fifth from its peak in 2001. In Tamil Nadu 1,200 schools were closed last year for a lack of pupils to fill their classrooms. Those who do attend increasingly show up without any siblings. The government frets that India will get old before it gets rich—that the country is on a similar path to China, where the population has already peaked and is starting to fall. Some politicians are offering cash to encourage Indians to procreate.
India’s demographic transition is the most striking example of a global trend. For it is no longer just wealthy places where families have few, or no, kids. Over two-thirds of all countries are now below the replacement rate. Middle-income ones like Brazil, Iran, Thailand and Turkey have been well below it for years. Poorer countries are steadily joining their ranks. Sri Lanka has a TFR of just 1.3; Tunisia’s is 1.6. Morocco has fallen below replacement rate. Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, may be close to that point. In many places birth rates are plunging despite marriage remaining near-universal and even though few women have formal jobs.
India also exemplifies why this global slump is happening. Falling rates of child mortality provide one explanation: parents need not have as many children if they can be confident they will all make it to adulthood. But demographers have long shown that what really counts is girls’ education. Schooling means that girls gain more autonomy and a greater say in life’s decisions. It is no coincidence that, in the 1990s, both India and much of Africa saw a huge surge in girls attending schools. It is only in the few places where most girls still don’t go into formal education—like Niger, northern Nigeria or Chad—that fertility has hardly budged.
Education shoves down fertility in another way, too. The more aspirational parents get, the more they need to invest in each child. This dynamic is accelerated when public schools are dire. Remarkably, 39% of Indian children went to fee-paying schools last year, up from 32% in 2015. Parents are caught in an educational arms race. If your neighbours have few kids and spend more on their education, your own will be out-competed unless you do the same.
Aspiration also spreads more easily than it once did. One study showed how the arrival of cable television in Indian villages in the 2000s led to a moderate fall in fertility. Soap operas depicting urban, middle-class women with small families may have changed norms (though some wonder whether people were just watching TV rather than having sex). The smartphone is an even more powerful—and distracting—device for bringing the lifestyles of richer peers into poorer places.
Whatever its precise cause, the baby bust has big implications. The UN, which tries to predict such things, has failed to account for the speed of fertility decline in its central forecast for the global population. Its lower forecast is likely to be more accurate. That suggests India’s population will peak at about 1.6bn in 20 years or so, and then fall back dramatically to just under a billion before the century ends. Asia as a whole may also reach its apex in the 2040s. As for the peak of the overall human population, that is probably coming sooner than most expect, perhaps even in the 2050s, because Africa won’t be as populous as previously thought. In the worst-run, most conflict-ridden places, fertility will stay high. But the lesson of India is that predictions of a future in which there are 500m Nigerians or 3.8bn Africans should be treated with appropriate scepticism.
They grow up so fast
If most countries are set for low fertility, it will be harder for anyone to bank on imports of migrant labour to tackle their own worker shortages. In India, fertility fell below the replacement rate at a much lower level of development than most countries: its GDP per person at purchasing power parity was less than half that of Malaysia, Mexico and Turkey at the same point. That need not cramp growth—China and Vietnam crossed the threshold at an even lower level of income—but it will complicate policymaking. In particular India, and countries like it, will be forced to divert scarce public resources into things like pensions and old-age care sooner than expected. That makes it more important than ever to increase the tax take: far more people, especially women, should be brought into India’s formal labour force, for example.
The sources of falling fertility—girls’ education, lower child mortality and the choices of individuals—are unambiguously good. But as India and others hurtle through their demographic transition, the consequences will not be pain-free.
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