DEMOGRAPHICS

India records below-replacement fertility as family costs reshape choices

India's falling birth rate has moved from population-control success story to economic and social warning sign. India's Sample Registration System recorded a total fertility rate of 1.9 births per woman in 2023, below the 2.1 level often used as the replacement benchmark. The National Family Health Survey had already put India below that threshold in 2019-21, while UN population estimates still project the country to remain the world's most populous state through mid-century. The story is not simply that Indians are rejecting parenthood. UNFPA's 2025 State of World Population report found that money, housing, job insecurity, unequal care work and anxiety about the future are limiting people's ability to have the family size they want. For Belgium and the EU, India remains central to debates about skills, students, migration, supply chains and the global ageing of workforces.

Belgium Impulse Editorial·14 June 2026·3 min read·8 sources

Key signal

This matters to Belgian readers because India's demographic shift affects a country Belgium already meets through students, IT workers, health-sector recruitment, research links, diamond trade and EU-India diplomacy. Belgian employers, universities and policymakers should not assume India's labour force will expand indefinitely. For families and voters in Belgium, the Indian case also mirrors familiar questions: housing costs, childcare, women's careers and pension sustainability. Eurostat says the EU's own fertility rate fell to 1.34 in 2024, so India is joining a wider ageing-world problem rather than standing apart from it.

India (South Asian republic and the world's most populous country, according to UN population estimates since 2023) is the centre of the story. The Sample Registration System (India's large-scale official demographic survey run by the Office of the Registrar General) tracks births, deaths and fertility between censuses. The National Family Health Survey (India's periodic household health survey, most recently NFHS-5 in 2019-21) measures fertility, contraception and family health. UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund, the UN's sexual and reproductive health agency) frames the issue around reproductive choice rather than national birth targets. YouGov (international polling company founded in 2000) conducted the cross-country survey used in UNFPA's 2025 report. Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand (large northern and central Indian states) are among the states still above replacement in recent Indian reporting. Delhi (India's national capital territory) is cited as one of the lowest-fertility jurisdictions.

Background

India began state-led family planning in the 1950s, long before many low- and middle-income countries adopted national fertility programmes. UN World Population Prospects data put India's total fertility rate above five births per woman in the 1950s and below two births per woman in the early 2020s. The 1975-77 Emergency remains a cautionary precedent because coercive sterilisation campaigns damaged trust in population policy. By contrast, NFHS-5 linked lower fertility to wider contraception use, education, urbanisation and state-level differences. The current turn is therefore from reducing births to managing ageing, regional imbalance and reproductive choice.

The wider picture

India's rise has often been linked to its scale: a huge market, a young workforce and strategic weight as China ages. Lower fertility does not erase that advantage, but it narrows the time window in which India can convert population size into productivity, military capacity, welfare resilience and bargaining power with the EU, United States and China.

Why now

The story is timely because recent Indian demographic data and UNFPA's 2025 report have shifted the fertility debate from population control to the reasons people delay, limit or forgo children despite often wanting families.

OIS Intelligence

What to watch

Watch India's next national survey results, state-level family-support proposals in low-fertility regions, and whether New Delhi's policy language stays focused on voluntary choice. For Belgium and the EU, watch student, work-permit and skills-mobility negotiations with India.

Opposing perspectives

UNFPA / reproductive-rights framing
UNFPA argues that the problem is not a lack of patriotism or family values but blocked choice: people are having fewer, more or later children than they want because money, care burdens, housing and health systems constrain them. Its report says policy should centre reproductive agency, not numerical birth targets.
Indian state planners worried about ageing
Recent Indian state-level reporting frames the fall in fertility as a future workforce and dependency-ratio problem, especially in lower-fertility southern and urban states. This view argues that India must shift from old population-control habits to policies that make child-rearing compatible with work, housing and education costs.
EU demographic-policy institutions
The European Commission's 2023 demographic staff paper says ageing and a shrinking working-age population put pressure on labour markets, welfare states and public budgets. From this perspective, India's transition matters because Europe cannot treat migration and skills flows from large younger countries as an inexhaustible adjustment valve.