Srinivas Goli: ‘India is getting old before getting rich’

There are also states where fertility rates are slightly above the replacement level fertility. But it differs for urban and rural areas. In urban areas, almost all states are either below or around replacement-level fertility. But if you combine urban and rural fertility, then states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have moderately high fertility.

The composition of a population changes due to three fundamental demographic components: fertility, mortality and migration. Fertility is the major component — the main reason for the change in the older population is the decline in fertility. When you have declining fertility, the ageing population rises because the proportion of the child population declines in the overall population. Also, when life expectancy goes up, it increases the share of the older population.

Migration plays an important role but we don’t have very good data on migration in recent times. Also, India is ageing fast. To take an example, the doubling of the share of the older population from 7 per cent to 14 per cent took 120 years in France and 80 years in Sweden. But that doubling from 7 per cent to 14 per cent took only 28 years in India. In some Indian states, this process is even faster. Some south Indian states are doubling their older population in less than 20 years.

Overall, fertility decline in India is much ahead of the socio-economic transition, especially in the south Indian states. Our fertility is declining much faster and at lower socio-economic standards. So, the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of Andhra Pradesh is 1.5, which is the same as Sweden but the per capita income of Sweden is 22 times that of Andhra Pradesh. There are similar differences in education, living standards and so on. This is a concern and we need to deal with it. Kerala is the first state in the country to have reached the replacement level fertility. But it is still between 1.6 and 1.8, whereas other states are going below 1.5. States with better gender norms can stabilise at 1.6 or 1.8.

When the old age dependency ratio crosses the child dependency ratio, it means there is a larger older population depending on the adult population. When the child dependency ratio goes below 30, that is, fewer than 30 children are dependent on 100 working-age people, and the older dependency ratio is less than 15, you get a window of opportunity — there is a bigger working age population and smaller dependent population. There is more production and savings.

This is the period where you actually reap the economic dividend out of the demographic bonus or opportunity that you get. India entered this phase in 2005. In 2015, the ratio became strong and it will last up to 2061 but will remain more effective until 2045. Faster ageing is the problem and soon some states will go out of this window-of-opportunity period.

We are ageing before reaping the full demographic dividend. I generally say that India is getting old before getting rich. There is much more potential available to reap.

On our preparedness to age

When the demographic transition is ahead of the socio-economic transition, you are yet to get rid of the burden of maternal, child health care and communicable diseases. Then suddenly there is an onset of non-communicable diseases and a burden of curative and palliative care.

Also, most elderly people are involved in informal sectors, so there is no social security support for them. So now we are trying our best to cope with the problem. Many policies have been introduced but there is a bigger challenge ahead. We need to manage our limited finances to handle this situation. India completed its fertility transition in just 45 years from its onset in the mid-70s to 2020, when it reached replacement-level fertility. Among the major countries, only China was faster. In their case, the socio-economic transition came first, and then the fertility transition. So they were in a much better position in terms of their economic environment and technological and medical care system.

We are better placed than Western countries in one important aspect: our family system is much better and stronger, and a lot of the older population is still living with their children. The family is the primary caregiver and family ties in India are much stronger than, say, what we have seen in Europe.

With increasing urbanisation, more and more young people are migrating to cities in search of work, so a ruralisation of ageing is taking place. There’s more feminisation because everywhere, the life expectancy of women is higher by about five years on average.

In India, female life expectancy increased more than that of men in the early 1990s. Since then, there has been a slow increase in the elderly female population compared to the elderly male  population. There are more females in the 60-plus population than males.

But in the urban areas, greater nuclearisation of families is happening. Compared to the West, our social ties are strong but still, the physical distance is increasing. Another important problem that we need to pay attention to is growing widowhood. Elderly women in families need greater prioritisation.

On urbanisation and ageing

If you look at any country, it is very difficult to stop urbanisation or modernisation. With greater urbanisation, the cost of living rises and parents do not want to have more children and take on higher costs of education, healthcare, housing and so on. Research in the West has shown that increasing rents lead to a fall in both marriage and fertility rates.

The age of marriage in certain populations is increasing because of unemployment. People are waiting longer to get settled before going for marriage and children. More women are now educated and they want to go into the labour market without bearing the cost of child-bearing. People are looking for greater self-actualisation, having a decent life, more time for self, higher self-esteem and more happiness in life. So it’s not just financial needs, people are looking for something more as well.

When those kinds of changes happen, we call it the second demographic transition. The full onset has not yet happened in India because we are still in the later stages of the first demographic transition. However, in the future, if all this happens, fertility rates may go down further. There is one more factor. As the strong preference for sons goes down, we may see a lowering of the fertility rate, like it happened in South Korea, where the TFR is just 0.8, among the lowest in the world.

On whether incentives can help

As several experts have said, recuperation of fertility through pro-natalist policies (incentivisation of births) is very difficult. In the UK, there was a very slight increase after the implementation of pro-natalist policies but there isn’t any example in the world where incentivising childbearing or going for marriage has reversed the fertility transition. Japan has initiated AI-based efforts to match couples and encourage them to get married and European countries have offered pro-natalist incentives but we have not seen a significant reversal in fertility.

Evidence from some recent papers suggests that if you improve gender equality — that is, if more men are ready to share household chores and the burden at the household level, it would reduce some of the motherhood penalty and give some confidence to women. But again, more and more women are thinking of self-actualisation.

Coercion is not an option, either to lower or to raise fertility. Fertility is a choice as is marriage. Pro-natalist policies may not see that kind of success because now people are more empowered. They have greater agency as well as greater autonomy. These are decisions taken based on the socio-economic and cultural environment people live in.