Female literacy drives decline: Bengal’s TFR drops 17.6%, urban rate lowest in India

KOLKATA: Bengal's Total Fertility Rate (TFR) has dropped by 17.6 % over the past decade, according to the Sample Registration Survey (SRS)'s Sept report, which also cites a literacy level among women in the 15-49 age group in the state that is higher than the national level.Rural Bengal recorded a sharper drop - 16.7% - compared to urban Bengal's 8.3%. The decline mirrors a nationwide drop of 16.7 %, an analysis of the figures gleaned from the SRS survey in 2011-13 and the one in 2021-2023 revealed.

TFR is the average number of children expected to be born per woman during her reproductive years. Bengal's TFR in 2023 - at 1.3 (down from 1.7 a decade before) - is way below the replacement level of 2.1, which is the average number of children a woman must give birth to for the population to remain stable.The state's rate is among the lowest in the country, says the SRS report of 2021-2023 that was released by the office of the registrar general of India this month. The state's urban TFR is the lowest in the country at 1.1, while the figure for rural Bengal is the second lowest at 1.4.Stressing that "education, more precisely female education, has a direct impact on fertility", the report says 93.1% of the women in Bengal in the 15-49 age group are literate.

The figure across India is 90.5%, while it is as high as 99%-plus in Kerala and Himachal Pradesh. In Bengal, one in four literate females in the 15-49 age group has studied till middle school. 'Declining TFR a healthy indicator' Economist Avirup Sarkar said, "A declining TFR is definitely a healthy indicator." It points at improved maternal and child health, increased gender empowerment and participation of women in the workforce, and greater population stability.Sarkar said, "Before the SRS 2023 report, other reports indicated declining lower-school drop-out rates among females. To me education is the key driver here."The Sept SRS report says India's TFR in 2023 was 1.9, with the average rate in rural areas (2.1) being higher than in urban zones (1.5). Bihar had the highest TFR among the bigger States/UTs (2.8), followed by Uttar Pradesh (2.6), Madhya Pradesh (2.4) and Rajasthan (2.3).Delhi recorded the lowest rate at 1.2, followed by Bengal and Tamil Nadu at 1.3.The SRS 2023 Age Specific Fertility Rates (ASFR) data shows that while women in the age-group of 25-29 had the highest fertility rate across the country at 136.3, in Bengal it's the opposite.Bengal's ASFR in the 25-29 age-group is the lowest in India at 75.4. Bengal's ASFR is the highest in the 20-24 age group - 96.9. The national average for the 20-24 age group is 107.5.But with the worrying trend of child marriages continuing to haunt Bengal, the ASFR in the 15-19 age group is quite high at 23.3, compared with the national average of 11.