INDIA’S FERTILITY RATE SHOWS A DECLINE

The report of the fifth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) revealed that the total fertility rate of India has declined from 2.2 to 2.0 indicating the significant progress of population control measures.

The Total Fertility Rate (TFR), which is measured as the average number of children per woman, has come down from 2.2 to 2.0 at the national level between NFHS-4 and 5. There are only five states in India, which are above the replacement level of fertility of 2.1. including Bihar (2.98), Meghalaya (2.91), Uttar Pradesh (2.35), and Jharkhand (2.26), Manipur (2.17).

The NFHS-5 survey work was conducted in around 6.37 lakh sample households from 707 districts (as on March, 2017) of the country from 28 States and 8 UTs, covering 724,115 women and 101,839 men to provide disaggregated estimates up to district level.

The Overall Contraceptive

Prevalence Rate (CPR) has increased substantially from 54% to 67% in the country.

“Use of modern methods of contraceptives has also increased in almost all States/UTs. Unmet needs for family planning have witnessed a significant decline from 13% to 9%. The unmet need for spacing, which remained a major issue in India in the past has come down to less than 10%,” said an official statement.

The NHFS-5 also mentioned that institutional births have increased substantially from 79% to 89% in India. Even in rural areas around 87% births are delivered in institutions and the same is 94% in urban areas.

Institutional births increased by a maximum of 27 percentage points in Arunachal Pradesh, followed by over 10 percentage points in Assam, Bihar, Meghalaya, Chhattisgarh, Nagaland, Manipur, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal. Over 91% of districts have more than 70% of births in the last 5 years that took place in health facilities.

As per the survey, the level of stunting among children under 5 years has marginally declined from 38 to 36% for India in the last four years.

Stunting is higher among children in rural areas (37%) than in urban areas (30%) in 2019-21. Variation in stunting ranges from the lowest in Puducherry (20%) and highest in Meghalaya (47%).

A notable decrease in stunting was observed in Haryana, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Sikkim (7 percentage points each), Jharkhand, and Madhya Pradesh and Manipur (6 percentage points each), and Chandigarh and Bihar (5 percentage points each).