India’s population growth rate has been declining over the years. Much more than the success of family planning programmes, the decline can be attributed to increasing alleviation of poverty, rising education levels, especially among women and growing urbanization.
S.Rukmini wrote about population trends in India in ‘liveMint’ based on the work of a Technical group on population projections that was set up in the office of the Registrar General of India to provide the country with population estimates for the period of 2011-2035. The projections were made using data on fertility, mortality, migration and urbanization and with an assumption that current demographic trends will hold (Looks unlikely and the change curve is likely to look steeper).
India is growing slower than before, and women are having fewer children, but there are still very much two speeds at which these processes are going on. Over one-third of the total increase in India’s population between 2011 and 2036 will come from two states alone - Uttar Pradesh and Bihar - new census population projections show, while all of the southern Indian states will see their share in the population declining.
TREND TWO: MIDDLE AGED COUNTRY & Missed Demographic Dividend: The author says that: at the same time, India will move from being a very young country, to increasingly resembling something closer to a middle-aged country. It appears that the time frame available to India to reap the demographic dividend is very less. There is no conscious effort worth mention to skill our youth and make them productive and the possibility of missing the fruits of demographic dividend appears real. More than two-thirds of India’s population is in the working age group of 15-64 years, more than one-fourth are in the 0-14 age group and around 6 per cent are over 65 years of age. Having a large number young population is a necessary condition for the ‘dividend’ to be realised, but not at all a sufficient one. India’s capacity to realise the demographic dividend will depend on the health and education levels of its population. Many states may have already missed the bus as northern states are already supplying the bulk of the labour force to other states.
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The middle-aged population in the country is increasing and the average age is likely to be between 35-39 by 2036.
By 2036, Tamil Nadu will be India’s oldest state, with a median age of over 40, while Bihar will remain India’s youngest state, the only state where the median individual will be under 30 even in 2036.
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