Demographics versus population growth

India does not face a population explosion problem, but a demographic disaster situation, which can be remedied urgently.

Demographics versus population growth

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• The UP pooulation policy: When Uttar Pradesh (UP) unveiled a population policy seeking to lower the state’s total fertility rate (TFR), and maternal and infant mortality rates, the state also unwrapped a draft population control bill.
• Promises: The state is now promising incentives for households with only two children and punitive exclusionary measures for those with more than two. Assam’s CM also made statements about adopting a two-child policy in his state. Both states are administered by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) governments, spurring some other BJP-ruled states to echo similar plans (e.g. Gujarat). A BJP member of Parliament has also promised to move a private member’s bill along similar lines (he has four young children, the youngest being a daughter).
• Irony in this approach: More than 50% of UP’s elected legislators have more than two children. Not surprisingly, the draft population control bill, proposes to exclude those already in public office!
• The facts: If we look at the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), a large-scale government survey conducted among households through multiple rounds. NHFS-V, 2019-20, completed in 17 states and five Union territories so far, it shows Assam’s TFR at 1.9 children per woman. This is below the 2.1 replacement rate at which a state’s population remains constant. The NFHS-V data for UP is not yet available, but NFHS-IV data shows UP’s TFR in 2015-16 at 2.7, down from 4.1 during 1998-99.
• No boom at all: So there is no population boom forcing these states to frame two-child policies. India’s large population is seen as a drag on development, but that is because myopic economic policy ensures limited resources are distributed unevenly and unfairly. Sudden and undemocratic laws can not remedy that. Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar has already said that laws alone cannot achieve population control.
• Politics: The politics of these proposed laws is important: BJP supporters have long believed that minorities with a higher TFR will soon outnumber the majority, thereby ignoring not only its mathematical improbability but also real data of India, that shows fertility rates declining across communities. BJP leaders do not at all clarify this position as it's a vote-catcher!
• Real time bomb: India’s population boom gave it a collateral benefit: a demographic dividend. The ‘dependency ratio’ — or the ratio of people not working/earning to the working/earning population — is good, and a demographic dividend promises to keep lowering this ratio as more people join the workforce. A dropping TFR over the years has been reducing the dependency ratio, as there are fewer children below working age dependent on the working population. A lower dependency ratio should ideally result in higher economic growth, as a larger percentage of the population is expected to be working/earning and thereby consuming and saving. But this demographic dividend has no value if at least 60-70% of the population in the 20-60 age group is not gainfully employed. A large section of Indian working population is dependent on the informal economy, where income streams are patchy and unpredictable. Given the economic stagnation and rising unemployment rates over the past decade, India’s demographic dividend looks like a missed opportunity.
• Summary: Improving living standards and medical advances over the past 40-50 years have prolonged life spans, thereby threatening to skew the dependency ratio at the other end of the age spectrum. The United Nation’s 2015 World Population Ageing report indicates that the number of people over 60 years in India is expected to increase from 116.55 million in 2015 to over 330 million by 2050. If there are fewer people saving currently, they will have fewer resources to support their golden years, or non-working years. With dropping fertility rates, there will be fewer people joining the workforce over the next few decades, thereby providing fewer resources to the government to finance rising social expenditure. The agenda for governments hence ought to be clear - urgently create employment opportunities, rather than hollow populist sentiments.

 

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