Are pro-natalist policies the way to address the ageing population problem?

While India’s Total Fertility Rate dropped to 1.9 in 2021, below the replacement fertility rate of 2.1, implying population stabilisation, there are sharp regional variations. Could you tell us more about the national and regional context of population growth?

Udaya Shankar Mishra: Let me first clarify that there is often a lot of confusion regarding population growth attaining the replacement level of fertility. Though the population growth in India has slowed down, the country’s population will keep on growing till 2070 as of now, whereas the world population will keep on growing till 2080. This means that our population will stop growing earlier than the world average. The reason behind the trajectory of population growth in India is its population momentum, which can occur after a period of high fertility, and which is when a large cohort of women come into the reproductive age bracket over time. Although the fertility rate declines, they still contribute significantly to the quantum growth in population. The replacement level of fertility rate is indicative of the fact that in terms of replacement reproduction, every mother is getting replaced by another mother. But that does not in any way imply that India’s population growth is going to immediately experience a negative growth rate.

What’s going to happen in south India if delimitation takes place? | In Focus podcast

Having said that, I must also elaborate on the birth rate and death rate transition in India, which will give you the the outcome of growth rate. Between 2060 and 2070, the death rate will cross the birth rate curve. Until then, the growth rate will continue. But there is a distinct north-south divide in the growth rate. Population growth in the south is slower than in the north. But the age composition of the population continues to remain in a manner such that it can sustain the population.

Also read | India’s population is also greying

There are two concerns which need to be highlighted. One is the issue of sustaining the population, and the other is the aspect of federal representation, which was enunciated by Mr. Stalin. The issue of sustaining the population encompasses the size of the working age population, the size of the non-working population, the population age, structure, and composition. But federal representation is in terms of share of the population of a State, which needs some rethinking. In this regard I had done some work with the last Finance Commission where we added demographic performance in the reading of populations, so that you are not just looking at population count but also qualitative aspects such as longevity.

Can you share some data with us to show the scale and the pace of ageing in different parts of the country?

Udaya Shankar Mishra: The scale and pace of ageing is actually measured in terms of the proportion of population that has aged. In 2021, Bihar’s proportion of aged population was 7.7% as against India’s 10.1%. Compare this with Tamil Nadu or Kerala, where the proportion was higher than the national average — 16.5% in Kerala and 13.7% in Tamil Nadu. When this pattern is projected for 2036, the share of the elderly population in Tamil Nadu will grow from 13.7% to 20.8% and in Kerala from 16.5% to 22.8%, whereas in Bihar it will grow from 7.7% to 11%. So, the pace of ageing in the northern States with high fertility is much lower. And I would say this pace of ageing is not only due to reduction in fertility levels, but also due to increasing longevity in southern States.

Is rapid ageing necessarily a bad thing or is it part of a natural progression in how a population changes over time? What should we really worry about?

Gita Sen: It is part of the natural progression. The question, however, is when you think of the population of a State or a country. There are different kinds of development approaches, and policies towards population and fertility play a big role in whether ageing is something to worry about and how to handle it. So, what we should really worry about are in fact a whole range of development and social factors, including health factors, as a population grows older. These include non-communicable diseases, heart issues, cancers, etc. The second is about jobs and what work is going to be possible for an older population. As the economy becomes more and more IT linked, physical strength and musculature have become less critical. This opens doors for the kind of work that an older population can do. There are other elements too, such as migration, and how one handles gender inequality and care services, which are critical regardless of the age of the population.

Comment | An ageing India: The magnitude and the multitude

Udaya Shankar Mishra: In fact, the pessimistic outlook of ageing is primarily because of the reading of ageing in a static way rather than a dynamic way. A dynamic reading of ageing would take into account life expectancy, which should be moving upwards. Second, the characteristics of the future elderly population would be very different from the present-day elderly population. So, apart from numbers, we should also take into account the characteristics of the ageing population as all the elderly can’t be deemed unproductive.

Given the pace of ageing in southern States, is having more children the solution?

Gita Sen: In the first half of independent India, we were concerned about a ‘population bomb’. As a result, we tried different policies, such as forced sterilisations, which didn’t work very well and which led to human rights violations. Now we seem to be swinging in the other direction, which is, how can we make people have more babies? We are talking about incentives. The incentives that Mr. Naidu is talking about are absurd. For instance, he mentioned that you can only stand for local elections if you have more than two babies. Earlier policies said one could only stand for local elections if one had less than two babies. So, we keep swinging. If anybody thinks that people will make decisions about electoral participation on the basis of whether they have more or less babies, that is absurd. What happened when we had the disincentive previously? Any local strongman who had five children would simply claim that he had only two and say the remaining three were not his, and that they belonged to either his brother or neighbour. Now if you tell people you need to have two or more, it is very easy to trot out someone else’s child and say these are mine.

Why do young couples not want to have kids? Shouldn’t government policies also try and understand and study those?

Gita Sen: Since 2015, worldwide, a number of countries, such as Hungary, Poland, Greece, Finland, and Sweden, where ageing is a major issue, have moved in the direction of pro-natalist policies. Under such policies, governments try to increase maternity leave or paternity leave and increase child support or reduce taxation if you have more children. They also try to give cash incentives for people to have children. Why don’t these work? Because of the cost of living. Is there adequate housing? What is the cost of raising a child? What does it cost to put a child in kindergarten and then school? Even in India, these issues are very serious. The other aspect is the big opportunity cost for women, who are largely responsible for the unpaid care of babies. They drop out of work, either permanently or for a short period of time. And when they go back, they would have lost their place in the promotion ladder. So, it is unlikely that women are going to want to have two-three children.

Given all these regional disparities, what should be at the heart of population policies?

Gita Sen: The human cost, human rights, and gender equality questions. Second, we need to look at the effectiveness of our policies. This can’t be through coercion, but by making them worthwhile in society, which also have financial costs. So, we need to address the the needs of an older population by way of healthcare, or taking advantage of technology to create job opportunities. There is also a huge potential for trained, empathetic carers when we have a very serious employment problem. But we can’t treat our care service workers as though they are cheap labour. We need to take care of them.

Watch | Why India should worry about its ageing population

But I would like to also add that from an ecological sustainability point of view, maybe it is not such a bad idea to move towards a smaller population size and towards replacement fertility. We need to think of planetary requirements and a standard of living that provides people with a decent way to live, ensures work-life balance, and gender equality.

Listen to the conversation in The Hindu Parley podcast