Rise and fall in the growth rate of India is the result of systematic changes in death and birth rates from high levels to moderate levels. In the beginning of the last century the death and birth rates of India were in the vicinity of 50 per thousand (Sharma, 1996). The death rate declined to 31 during 1931-41 and to 15 in 1971-81. After that due to socio-economic development and efforts made by the Government of India to provide health facilities to its population, mortality rate started declining. By 2008 the death rate of India has came down to 7.4. Life expectancy which was around 20 in the beginning of the century rose to 31 in 1971-81 and 50 in 1971-81. At present the life expectancy is above 64 for males and above 66 for females. However, birth rate remained above 40 till 1971. Birth rate started declining only during 1971-81. It has come down to 22.8 and there is evidence that it will decline further. In the future, since life expectancy has already reached 65 it will be more and more difficult to improve it further, though there is a lot of scope for this ( Box 6.1 ). India 's life expectancy is 10-15 years lower than that of the industrially advanced countries. The fertility will decline and, therefore, the growth rate of population is likely to decline further.
There is one more reason why the growth rate will decline further. That is the effect of age distribution, called population momentum. It can be shown that the decline in the average fertility does not immediately affect the growth rate of population. If a high fertility country achieves a total fertility rate of 2.1 its growth rate will not become zero immediately. It will take a few decades for the population to stabilize because in the meantime more and more people will enter reproductive ages and produce their first and second child. When fertility was high, nearly 40 percent population of India was below the age of 14 years. With decline of fertility this percentage has come down but the number of children is still very large. As time passes they will grow, enter the reproductive period, marry and produce children. Therefore, the country will continue to have positive growth rate for several decades. In the Tenth Five Year Plan it has been estimated that the contribution of age distribution to growth of India 's population is about 60 percent.
|
