Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh are the three states that have the highest total fertility rate (TFR), propelling India towards becoming the world’s most populous country in the next seven years.

 

China (with 1.4 billion inhabitants) and India (1.3 billion inhabitants) remain the two most populous countries, comprising 19 and 18% of the total global population. Around 2024, the population of India is expected to surpass that of China, said The World Population Prospects 2017. 

 

India’s total fertility rate was 2.6 in 2008, which went down to 2.3 in 2013, according to Niti Aayog.

 

Data shows that Bihar has the highest TFR of 3.4 in 2013, which was way above the national average. Uttar Pradesh was a close second with a TFR of 3.1, while Madhya Pradesh had a TFR of 2.9.

 

West Bengal had the lowest TFR of 1.6 in the country. Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi were a close second with a TFR of 1.7.

 

In India, an estimated 26 million babies are born every year. However, according to an article in the journal of perinatology, about 0.75 million neonates die every year in India, the highest for any country in the world.

 

The neonatal mortality rate (NMR) declined from 52 per 1000 live births in 1990 to 28 per 1000 live births in 2013, but the rate of decline has been slow and lags behind that of infant and under-five child mortality rates. The slower decline has led to increasing contribution of neonatal mortality to infant and under-five mortality, said the article.

 

The latest UN report said from 2017 to 2050, it is expected that half of the world’s population growth will be concentrated in just nine countries: India, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Tanzania, the US, Uganda and Indonesia.

 

In 2010-2015, around 46 percent of the world’s population lived in intermediate-fertility countries, where women have on average between 2.1 and 5 births over a lifetime. Intermediate-fertility countries are found in many regions, with the largest being India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mexico and the Philippines. In 2045-2050, it is expected that slightly less than a third of the world’s population will live in countries with fertility in this range. By that time, most of the world’s population will be living in countries with relatively low levels of fertility, where women bear fewer than 2.1 children on average.