Almost unthinkable just a decade ago, India have followed the rest of the world, where more middle class people means fewer children.
That’s down from 3.3 across the 2000s.
It isn’t just that though… while they didn’t have a strict one-child policy like China, the government did push the idea of having less kids, and they offer free sterilisation to men and women.
It is a good time to peak because they are already up to 1.5 billion people!
Regionally the fertility rates can be starkly different:
India’s capital New Delhi — with among the highest levels of education and lowest infant mortality rates — registered the lowest fertility rate, with an average of 1.2 births per woman. Southern states such as Tamil Nadu and Kerala, with among the best health and education systems in India, recorded a rate of 1.3.
India doesn’t really have immigration, so expect the government to start addressing this soon, or the domestic economy will flounder and the ratio of elderly and non-workers will keep increasing.
Source Al Jazeera