YOUNG AND THE OLD

Lancet report on fall in fertility rate in India should alert policymakers to ageing population's needs

INDIA WILL TURN into an ageing society in the next three decades, according to a report in the Lancet. The medical journal has flagged that India’s TFR — the average number of children born to a woman — will fall to 1.29 in 2050. One in five persons in India will be above the age of 60 in 2050. The Lancet is not the first to shine a light on this impending demographic shift. Last year, the UN Population Fund's (UNPF) India Ageing Report projected that the number of elderly in India will more than double from 149 million in 2022 to 347 million by mid-century. The challenges of a growing ageing population may well be decades away. However, the young country would do well to prepare for them in advance.

The Lancet report is a message that India's demographic dividend is not for perpetuity. Global experiences could be illustrative for the country's policymakers. In China, for instance, the proportion of the working age population crossed 50 per cent in 1987 and peaked around the middle of the last decade. This was also the period when the country registered impressive economic growth. By last year, China's TFR had dropped to a record low and its working-age population had contracted by more than 40 million. The Chinese government's pro-population-growth measures do not seem to be working. In fact, the last 60 years' history of developed nations suggests that once fertility rates fall below the replacement rate, it's almost impossible to set them back. At 1.9, India's TFR is currently just below the replacement rate, and according to UNPF calculations, the share of the country's working-age population will peak in the late 2030s, early 2040s. Policymakers must, therefore, utilise this window to maximise India's demographic dividend, as China did from the late 1980s till the early years of the last decade. No time must be lost in putting in place measures to overcome skill deficits and plug gaps in the knowledge economy. The challenge will also be to generate jobs outside of agriculture — they must not be in the low-paid informal sector.

Going ahead, policymakers will also have to ensure adequate social security and healthcare provisions for the growing elderly population and create opportunities to harness their skills effectively. The varying TFR rates across states in India could present the country's planners with a somewhat unique challenge — in fact, there are already signs that parts of south India and west India are greying faster than those in the north. Policymakers must be ready to understand the demographic shift in all its dimensions, and prepare for the change.