We two, ours two, our TFR at two
Premium- Richer, more “developed” countries tend to have low Total Fertility Rate (TFR)
Bear with me while I recount a small epiphany from soon after India’s 1981 Census.
That Census found that for illiterate Indian women, the average age at marriage was about 16 years and six months. Let that sink in for a moment: 16.5 years at her marriage. That young.
It also found that women who went to primary school got married, on average, not at sixteen-and-a-half, but about three months after they turned 17. Still painfully young, sure. Even so, going to primary school adds about nine months to the average age at which an Indian woman gets married.
Here’s how I suggest you consider this: simply attending primary school slices nine months from her baby-producing years. That’s one less potential child the woman might give birth to.
What if she sets her sights a little higher? If an Indian woman earns a college degree, on average, she gets married at about 21 years and 8 months. That’s more than five years later than her uneducated womanly compatriots. That’s almost seven possible pregnancies.
Now, you can nitpick this data, no doubt. For example, surely these numbers have changed since the 1981 Census? Does a woman really start producing babies as soon as she is married? Does reproduction happen only during marriage? Still, whether we can actually assume those and even if the numbers are dated, these are not particularly important details here. Instead, think for a moment of educating women in this raw way: as an effective means to shrink the span during which they can produce babies. And therefore, an effective way to put a brake on population growth.
That’s the lesson of that nugget from the 1981 Census.
Why is this relevant today? Because of something called the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) - the average number of children born to a woman through her life. TFR relates directly to population growth -- The higher a country’s TFR, the faster its population grows. Around the world, richer, more “developed" countries have low TFRs; poorer countries have high TFRs. Which is why the “natural" growth - babies, not immigration - of the populations of richer countries is slower than in poorer countries.
Population control mechanisms, where they have been put in place, aim reduce the TFR to 2. That is “replacement level" - because every couple producing babies replaces themselves. No more, no less. Theoretically, if a country’s TFR is 2 and there’s no immigration, its population won’t change. Practically, replacement level is usually thought of as a TFR of about 2.1 - because some babies die.
All this is relevant because India’s TFR, steadily decreasing for years, has recently reached 2. If true, the growth in our population will soon level off. In fact, our population will soon start falling.
In an article about our TFR Shivam Vij points to this development and remarks: “It is a mystery why we are not celebrating this landmark moment." After all, “Hum Do Hamare Do" (often translated as “We Two, Ours Two") has been our family-planning mantra for decades. Painted on Tamil Nadu auto-rickshaws, you’ll even find a modified version: “We Two, Ours One."
So, since we’ve finally reached this TFR milestone, Vij asks: “why aren’t we celebrating more?"
I can’t answer that. But maybe there are things to think about.
Like with any data about a large country like India, simply quoting the overall TFR is misleading and hides a more nuanced picture. For one example that Vij touches on, there are large northern states (Bihar, Jharkhand, UP) whose TFRs remain above 2 - Bihar’s is near 3 and will not sink to 2 for at least 15 years. This speaks to a long-standing grievance of southern states - they have toiled at slowing population growth, but the north has not. Yet, if we ever revise parliamentary representation to better reflect our population distribution, the northern states will get a greater share of the seats purely because they have a greater share of the population now than some decades ago. That is, such an exercise will actually reward their apathy towards slowing their population growth. To which the northern states might retort: “Yes, but a democracy means one woman one vote" - entirely reasonable - “so, all we’re asking for is our fair share."
You can ponder all that, debate it to the extent you’d like. I’ll point out that when we speak of the babies born to a woman “through her life", we effectively mean the span during which she can bear children. Let’s assume that’s about 30 years, meaning puberty at 15 to menopause at 45. Merely educating women through college reduces that span by 6 years, which is by itself a factor in depressing the TFR - without getting into all the other reasons to educate women.
Yet, there are some fascinating, even sobering, effects of lowering our TFR. Data journalist Rukmini S. points out some in her excellent book Whole Numbers and Half Truths.
For one example, the average Indian woman now has her first child two years earlier than in 1950. (So much for slicing those early years off her child-bearing span.) Why this surprising phenomenon? Consider that when the TFR was higher than it is today, women kept having babies late into their child-bearing span, often even into their forties. Thus the large families in those times. But as the TFR fell and consequently lowered family sizes, “the average Indian woman finishe[d] having her children far earlier than before." The effect is that Indian women “still have their children relatively young - they just stop having more children sooner."
For another, the decreasing TFR means that we can see that the growth in yearly births in India is slowing. But there’s a troubling side to that bald fact: “the slowdown is faster for girl babies than for boy babies." That is, even if increased education levels act to lower the TFR, they don’t seem to have much of an effect on “the intensity of preference for male children" that we’ve always known in India. (To be fair, in plenty of other societies too.)
Among families with only two children - the embodiment of that long-sought-after TFR level - half have one boy and one girl, which is exactly what straightforward probability suggests. But it also suggests that the remaining half should be evenly split between two-girl and two-boy families, or a quarter each. In reality, one-third have two boys while one-sixth have two girls.
In fact, writes Rukmini, “the decline in fertility [contributes significantly to] the recent increase in India’s sex ratio in favour of boys."
So, do we celebrate this TFR milestone? Your call.
Once a computer scientist, Dilip D’Souza now lives in Mumbai and writes for his dinners. His Twitter handle is @DeathEndsFun