The Causes of High Population Growth

Stage four: low and stable. Both rates low, population steady or declining.

The key insight to state. Rapid population growth is not caused by a rise in the birth rate. It is caused by a fall in the death rate that the birth rate has not yet caught up with. Every country that has industrialised has passed through the same sequence, and India's transition has in fact been faster than most.

Why the death rate fell, and fell first

1. Control of epidemics. Plague, cholera, smallpox and malaria killed on a scale now hard to imagine. Vaccination, vector control and quarantine removed most of it.

2. The end of famine mortality. Famine relief, buffer stocks, the public distribution system and the transport network that moves grain across the country have made death from famine, as distinct from chronic undernutrition, essentially absent since independence.

3. Medical advance and public health. Antibiotics, immunisation, maternal and child health services and institutional delivery. The infant mortality rate fell from 40 to 25 per thousand live births between 2013 and 2023 alone, and it was several times that at independence.

4. Water, sanitation and nutrition. Piped water, sanitation and better nutrition remove the conditions in which infectious disease spreads.

The result. Life expectancy at birth is now 70.3 years for 2019-23, against about 32 years at independence. That gain is the single greatest achievement recorded anywhere in this module, and it is also, arithmetically, the cause of the population growth.

Why the birth rate stayed high, and fell late

These are the causes MU's label is asking for.

Economic causes

1. Children as economic assets. In an agricultural household, a child works from an early age, costs little to keep, and is the only pension the parents will have. Where that is true, having more children is a rational decision, and telling such a household to have fewer is telling it to be poorer in old age. This is the most important single cause and it should lead any answer.

2. Poverty itself. A poor household cannot invest much in each child, so quantity substitutes for quality. It also has the least access to contraception and to information.

3. High infant and child mortality, historically. When some children will not survive, parents have more to ensure that enough do. Fertility therefore falls only after infant mortality has fallen, and with a lag, because expectations adjust to experience slowly. This is why the fall in the infant mortality rate is a cause of the later fall in the birth rate.

Social causes

4. Universal and early marriage. Marriage is near universal in India and has historically been early. Early marriage lengthens the reproductive span and raises completed fertility. The Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2006 sets the minimum age, and rising age at marriage is one of the strongest proximate causes of falling fertility.

5. Illiteracy, and above all female illiteracy. Female education is the variable most strongly associated with lower fertility anywhere in the world. It raises the age at marriage, improves knowledge and use of contraception, raises the value of a woman's time and gives her a say in the decision. India's literacy rose from 18.3 per cent in 1951 to 73.0 per cent in 2011, and fertility fell alongside it.

6. The low status of women and the absence of decision. Where a woman does not decide the number or spacing of her children, fertility reflects somebody else's preference.

7. Preference for a son. Where a son is required for inheritance, for old age support or for religious rites, couples continue childbearing until they have one. That raises fertility directly, and it is also the mechanism behind the falling child sex ratio noted in the previous chapter.

8. The joint family, and religious and social attitudes. In a joint family the cost of an additional child is shared and less visible to the parents. Attitudes towards contraception and towards family size differ across communities and change slowly.

9. Climate and custom are often listed, and are the weakest items on the list. They are worth a line, not a paragraph.

What has changed, and where growth is still high

An answer that stops at the list above is answering the question as it stood in 1975. Three further points are needed.

The causes have weakened. Female literacy has risen, age at marriage has risen, infant mortality has fallen from 40 to 25 per thousand in a decade, incomes have risen, and the cost of raising a child has risen sharply with education. Every one of these pushes fertility down, and the total fertility rate has fallen from 2.3 in 2013 to 1.9 in 2023.

Growth continues because of momentum, not fertility. A very large number of women are currently in the child bearing ages, the result of the high fertility of thirty years ago. Even at fewer than two children each, the number of births remains large. Population momentum is the reason a country can continue to grow for a generation after fertility falls below replacement.

Where growth is still high, it is regional. The national total fertility rate of 1.9 combines States well below replacement with States still above it. Fertility fell first in the southern and western States and later in the northern and eastern ones, so the remaining growth is concentrated there, and the policy question is now about those States rather than about the country.

A worked example: two women, one generation apart

Kamala, married in 1978 in a village in central India. Married at 16. Six live births, of which four survive to adulthood. She has no schooling. The family holds two hectares, and her children work on it from the age of eight. There is no pension and no health cover.

Her granddaughter Meena, married in 2018 in the same village. Married at 22. Two children. She completed school and a year of college. Her husband works in a town; the land is now half a hectare after division. Both children are in a private school and the fees are the household's largest expenditure after food. Her mother in law receives a pension.

Reading the causes off the two lives.

• Age at marriage rose by six years, which shortens the reproductive span.
• Female education rose from none to thirteen years, which is the strongest single association.
• Child survival: Kamala had six to keep four; Meena expects both to survive, so she does not need more.
• Children as assets became children as costs. Kamala's children worked; Meena's are educated at heavy expense and will not work for a decade.
• Old age support now comes partly from a pension rather than entirely from sons.
• The holding halved, so the land cannot absorb more workers.

What the example demonstrates. Fertility fell because the conditions changed, not because anybody was persuaded. That is the central lesson of the topic and the reason coercive population policy is both wrong and unnecessary.

Population policy in India, briefly

The first in the world. India adopted a family planning programme in 1952, the first country to do so.

The emergency period, 1975 to 1977, saw coercive sterilisation, which produced lasting public resistance to the entire programme. That episode is the standing argument for a voluntary approach, and it should be mentioned in any answer on policy.

The National Population Policy 2000 set out a voluntary, target free approach with the objective of achieving a stable population, and made the immediate objective the meeting of unmet need for contraception and health infrastructure.

The instruments that actually worked were not the ones aimed at fertility. Female education, child survival, women's employment and old age security reduce fertility because they change the reasons for having children.

The law on population control

MU asks this directly and repeatedly, in the form "the importance of various laws in connection with population control in India", so a law student should be able to answer it as a lawyer rather than as a demographer.

1. The constitutional entry, which is the first thing to state. Entry 20A of List III, the Concurrent List, reads "Population control and family planning". It was inserted by the Constitution (Forty-second Amendment) Act 1976, section 57, with effect from 3 January 1977.

Read that date against the section above. The subject was written into the Constitution in the middle of the Emergency, the very period in which coercive sterilisation was carried out. Its placement in the Concurrent List means that both Parliament and a State Legislature may legislate on it, and that under article 254 a Union law prevails over an inconsistent State law. So the constitutional competence exists at both levels and has existed since 1977.

2. The age of marriage. The Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2006 fixes the minimum age of marriage, and the age at marriage is one of the strongest proximate determinants of completed fertility, because it sets the length of the reproductive span. This is the clearest instance of a law that reduces fertility without addressing fertility at all.

3. The directive principles, which supply the constitutional direction rather than a power. Article 47 makes the raising of the level of nutrition and the standard of living and the improvement of public health a primary duty of the State, and article 39(e) and (f) protect the health of children. The programmes described above are made under that direction.

4. Policy rather than statute. The National Population Policy 2000 is an executive policy and not an Act. This matters: it means the framework is voluntary and target free by choice of policy, and could in law be changed without amending any statute.

5. What the law does not do. There is no Indian law that limits the number of children a person may have, and the constitutional competence in entry 20A has not been used to enact one at the Union level. Some States have at times attached disqualifications from local body office or from certain benefits to the number of children, and such measures raise questions under articles 14 and 21 which are for a constitutional law course rather than this one.

6. Why an economist would resist a coercive law anyway, and this is the answer that earns the marks. The evidence in this chapter is that fertility fell where the conditions for smaller families appeared, not where it was prohibited: total fertility is already 1.9, below replacement, and continued growth is momentum and not high fertility. A law that punishes a large family therefore addresses a condition that has largely passed, falls hardest on the poorest, who have the least access to contraception and the most reason to want surviving children, and risks the sex selection that the Pre conception and Pre natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act 1994 exists to prevent. The instruments that worked were education, child survival, women's employment and old age security, and none of them is a prohibition.

What beginners get wrong

"The birth rate rose, which is why the population exploded." It did not. The death rate fell. The birth rate was always high and fell late.

"India's population is still growing rapidly." The total fertility rate is 1.9, below replacement, and the natural increase has fallen from 14.4 to 12.0 per thousand between 2013 and 2023. Growth continues because of momentum.

"Population growth is caused by illiteracy and religion." Female education matters a great deal and is well evidenced. Community differences in fertility are largely explained by differences in education, income and urbanisation rather than by belief, and fertility has fallen in every community.

"A one child rule would solve it." India's fertility is already below two. Coercion was tried in 1975 to 1977, produced lasting damage to the voluntary programme, and is unnecessary where the conditions for smaller families exist.

Limits and criticism

The demographic transition model is a description, not a law. It was derived from European experience and countries differ in the speed and the sequence.

National averages conceal the States that matter. The remaining question is regional, and a national answer is not useful for it.

Fertility below replacement brings its own problems, principally an ageing population and a shrinking working age share, which is exactly what [The Demographic Dividend] warns about.

Data limits. There has been no census since 2011, and vital rates come from a sample registration system rather than complete registration.

Quick revision

1. Natural increase = birth rate minus death rate. In India, 21.4 and 7.0 in 2013 to 18.4 and 6.4 in 2023, so natural increase fell from 14.4 to 12.0 per thousand.
2. Demographic transition: stage one high and fluctuating; stage two the death rate falls and the birth rate does not, which is the explosive stage; stage three the birth rate falls; stage four both low. 1921 is India's great divide.
3. The key insight: rapid growth was caused by a falling death rate, not a rising birth rate.
4. Why deaths fell: control of epidemics, end of famine mortality, medical advance and immunisation, water and sanitation. Life expectancy about 32 years at independence to 70.3 years for 2019-23; infant mortality 40 to 25 per thousand between 2013 and 2023.
5. Why births stayed high: children as economic assets and old age security; poverty; high infant mortality; universal and early marriage; illiteracy, especially female; the low status of women; son preference; the joint family; social attitudes.
6. What changed: female literacy 18.3 per cent in 1951 to 73.0 per cent in 2011, later marriage, child survival, rising cost of raising a child. TFR 2.3 in 2013 to 1.9 in 2023, below replacement.
7. Growth now continues because of population momentum, and is concentrated in the northern and eastern States.
8. Policy: family planning programme from 1952, the first in the world; coercion in 1975 to 1977 and its lasting damage; the National Population Policy 2000, voluntary and target free.

Test yourself

1. Explain the theory of demographic transition and locate India in it. The theory describes four stages. In the first, both birth and death rates are high and fluctuating, so population grows slowly and is periodically cut back by famine and epidemic; India was in this stage until about 1921, which is why that year is called the great divide. In the second, the death rate falls sharply in response to public health measures while the birth rate remains high, so population grows fastest; India was in this stage from about 1921 to 1981. In the third, the birth rate falls as incomes rise, children survive, women are educated and the cost of raising a child rises, and growth slows; India has been in this stage since about 1981. In the fourth, both rates are low and population is stable or declining. With a total fertility rate of 1.9 in 2023, below the replacement level of about 2.1, India is at the end of the third stage.

2. Why did India's population grow so rapidly after 1921? Because the death rate fell sharply and the birth rate did not follow for several decades. Deaths fell because their causes respond quickly to public action: epidemics of plague, cholera, smallpox and malaria were controlled by vaccination and vector control; famine mortality ended with relief, buffer stocks, the public distribution system and a transport network able to move grain; and immunisation, antibiotics and maternal and child health services reduced infant and child deaths, the infant mortality rate falling from 40 to 25 per thousand live births even between 2013 and 2023 alone. Births did not fall, because the reasons for having children are social and economic and change slowly. The gap between a rapidly falling death rate and a slowly falling birth rate is what produced the growth.

3. State the causes that kept India's birth rate high. Economic causes: children were economic assets, working from an early age, costing little and serving as the only old age security available; poverty, which limited both investment in each child and access to contraception; and high infant mortality, which led parents to have more children so that enough should survive. Social causes: near universal and early marriage, which lengthened the reproductive span; illiteracy and above all female illiteracy; the low status of women and their absence from the decision about family size; preference for a son, which caused childbearing to continue until one was born; the joint family, which spread the cost of an additional child; and slow changing social and religious attitudes to contraception.

4. Why is female education regarded as the most effective means of reducing fertility? Because it acts on several of the causes at once. It raises the age at marriage, which shortens the reproductive span. It raises knowledge and use of contraception. It raises the value of a woman's time, so the opportunity cost of another child rises. It raises her say in the decision about the number and spacing of children. And it improves child survival, which removes the need to have additional children as insurance. The association is among the strongest and most consistent in demography, and India's own experience matches it: literacy rose from 18.3 per cent in 1951 to 73.0 per cent in 2011 and the total fertility rate fell over the same period, reaching 1.9 by 2023.

5. "India's population is still growing rapidly and must be controlled." Comment. The premise is out of date. The total fertility rate was 1.9 in 2023, below the replacement level of about 2.1; the birth rate has fallen from 21.4 to 18.4 per thousand between 2013 and 2023, and the natural rate of increase from 14.4 to 12.0. India continues to grow only because an unusually large number of women are currently in the child bearing ages, the legacy of the high fertility of a generation ago, which demographers call population momentum, and that effect will exhaust itself. Where fertility remains above replacement the position is regional, principally in certain northern and eastern States, and the remedy there is female education, child survival, women's employment and old age security rather than control. Coercion was attempted between 1975 and 1977 and produced lasting public resistance to the voluntary programme, which is the strongest practical argument against repeating it.

6. What is population momentum? It is the tendency of a population to continue growing for a considerable period after fertility has fallen to or below replacement level, because the age structure inherited from the earlier high fertility period contains an unusually large number of women in the child bearing ages. Even if each of them has fewer than two children, the total number of births remains high relative to the number of deaths, since the older cohorts from whom deaths mainly come are much smaller. The effect works itself out only as the large cohorts pass beyond child bearing age, which takes roughly a generation, and it is the reason India's population is projected to continue rising for some years despite a total fertility rate of 1.9.