Editorial 1 : Aspiration, choice, demography
Context
India’s real fertility crisis is about choice, not numbers.
The report
- The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has released its State of the World Population Report 2025, which focuses on “Real fertility crises:
- The pursuit of reproductive agency in a changing world”. As fertility rates decline worldwide, the crisis lies not in population numbers but in unmet reproductive aspirations of women and couples.
- It specifically refers to the gap between an individual’s or couple’s desires regarding children and family size and the social, cultural, or policy-driven expectations placed on them.
- Concerns about population shifts are driving demographic anxiety that is undermining the reproductive autonomy of women globally, including in India.
The transforming trends - Globally
- Global demographics are transforming at a whirlwind pace. Fertility rates are declining, and the world’s population is projected to peak this century.
- The global fertility rate has decreased from around 5 in 1960 to 3.3 in 1990 and 2.2 in 2024, though significant regional variations exist.
- Fertility rates less than 2 are becoming the norm, with more than half of the world’s countries — accounting for more than two-thirds of the global population — having a fertility rate below 2.1 births per woman (World Fertility Report 2024).
- Globally, it is projected that all countries will have a fertility level less than 4 by 2054.
In India – the challenges
- In India, the national fertility rate declined from 2.9 in 2005 to 2.0 in 2020 (SRS, 2020) although large inter-state variations exist.
- The overall population of children under five peaked in 2004, followed by a peak in the number of children and adolescents under 15 in 2009.
- As per the UNFPA and YouGov survey, a central finding was widespread unmet reproductive aspirations.
- Many individuals face obstacles both in avoiding unintended pregnancies and in having children when they want to.
- These are compounded by social norms and unequal relationship dynamics. Increasingly, women report difficulty in finding a suitable partner and negotiating equitable division of household and caregiving responsibilities.
- Marriage in India continues to place a burden on women, who are expected to manage cooking, child-rearing, and other domestic duties.
- The lack of supportive workplace policies such as paid parental leave, flexible hours, and childcare facilities further discourages women from balancing careers with family life.
- For many women in the informal sector, these supportive policies do not exist. A growing number of women and couples are also expressing hesitation about raising children in a difficult global environment.
- It is important to address infertility, an issue stigmatised in India, where marriage is often equated with childbearing.
- Despite advances in healthcare, many women still face barriers in accessing maternal care and reproductive health information.
- For couples struggling with infertility, the options are often limited, expensive, or poorly regulated.
- Treatments are dominated by private players, and high costs, combined with lack of insurance coverage, make the experience prohibitively expensive for most.
- Another challenge lies in changing patterns of childbearing. Early childbearing is on the decline, with more women choosing to have children later in life (World Fertility Report, 2024).
- According to NFHS-5, 4 per cent of currently married women aged 15–49 report unmet needs for spacing. This is shaped by social norms that discourage contraceptive use and a preference for male children. These factors undermine women’s reproductive autonomy.
Way forward
- The moment calls for a proactive perspective to engage women, families and communities around their reproductive autonomy through informed choices.
- The future lies in building a country’s capacity to anticipate, adapt to, and take advantage of demographic changes within a human rights framework.