The decline marks a milestone where a decades-long fertility decline has now brought rural India in line with global demographic trends.
New Delhi: India’s total fertility rate (TFR) has slipped below two children per woman for the first time, with new government data showing a national average of 1.9 in 2023. Rural India, long seen as the driver of population growth, has now reached the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman — the threshold at which births just balance deaths to stabilise population levels.
The TFR measures the number of children a woman is expected to have throughout their reproductive age. Replacement level TFR is the rate needed for each generation to replace the previous generation’s population. However, the decline in TFR is attributed to factors like increased education for women, better access to family planning, delayed marriage, and declining child mortality.
According to the 2023 Sample Registration System (SRS) report released on Wednesday, rural fertility had remained stagnant at 2.2 between 2020 and 2022 before dropping to 2.1 in 2023. The decline marks a milestone where a decades-long fertility decline has now brought rural India in line with global demographic trends.
Urban areas, where fertility fell below 2.1 more than two decades ago, declined further to 1.5 in 2023 from 1.6 in 2020 to 2022.
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This demographic shift comes even as India’s death rates remain elevated compared to pre-pandemic levels. The country’s crude death rate (CDR) stood at 6.4 per thousand people in 2023 — down from 6.8 in 2022, but still higher than the 6.0 recorded in 2019–20. The last time India saw a CDR of 6.4 before Covid was in 2016.
The second wave in 2021 had pushed deaths to 7.5 per thousand, with SRS estimates suggesting nearly two million excess fatalities. Since then, rural areas have shown faster recovery, with CDR falling from 7.9 in 2021 to 6.8 in 2023 — roughly the level last seen in 2017. Urban areas, however, remain slower to bounce back: the 2023 urban CDR was 5.7, down from 6.0 in 2022, but still above the pre-Covid figure of 5.1 in 2020. Cities last recorded a death rate this high in 2011.
Experts note that the delay in India’s 2021 census may also be affecting the accuracy of population estimates used in calculating fertility and mortality indicators, potentially making the SRS sample less representative.
 has slipped below two children per woman for the first time, with new government data showing a national average of 1.9 in 2023. Rural India, long seen as the driver of population growth, has now reached the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman — the threshold at which births just balance deaths to stabilise population levels.){kind=link}