In 2021, 26,734 prospective parents registered in the CARA portal, and 2,430 children were legally free for adoption. In other words, there were 11 prospective parents for every child free for adoption in 2021. At the same time, it is true that we cannot assume that this will always be the case. A demonstrated for Iran for example (Abbasi-Shavazi, Hosseini-Chavoshi, and McDonald 2007), declines in fertility can sometimes be accompanied by significant increases in the first birth interval; if that is also beginning to happen in India, we may be underestimating cohort fertility. Our results add to the growing body of literature on very low fertility that now notes diverse routes to one child policy in india low fertility. As we discussed above, this diversity is also implied in more recent understandings of sub-replacement fertility in parts of Europe and East Asia.
If social mobility is indeed a key motivating factor, increased investments in children are more likely to bear fruit for families that are already privileged; if low fertility becomes the norm rather than the exception, its impact on social mobility is likely to dampen. However, there is great deal of similarity between East Asia and India in the increased resources needed to raise a child with a satisfactory potential future. In a society in which intergenerational expectations continue to be bidirectional, rearing such a child also means a marked rise in parental status and fortunes and, to that extent, the one child family is certainly an indicator of sharply rising social and economic aspirations. Rising social and economic aspirations in East Asia have often been expressed through high levels of investments in children. Here we find considerable parallels with India where social mobility aspirations find an expression in heavy child specific investments and the curtailment of fertility.
The Cons of a Child Limit in India
Before we speculate about the reasons for an apparent increase in the popularity of the one child family in some segments of the population of India, we need to establish that this is a real phenomenon and that it reflects a conscious and deliberate choice. Table 1 based on fertility estimates from the 2001 and 2011 censuses clearly establishes that 9 out of 35 states and Union Territories have TFRs below 2 (Guilmoto and Rajan 2013); however, this does not distinguish between period and cohort fertility. Hence, we examine several different sources of data to see if there is any evidence of an emerging trend towards families with a single child.
What one-child policy? As India’s population growth slows, China-style controls on births called into question
That is, is our five year cut off merely too short a birth interval in today’s’ world? IHDS data for the distribution of second birth intervals in our sample show that over 90% of the birth intervals fall within the 5 year cut off we use. Most of this discussion is tied to analyses of the one-child policy instituted by the Chinese government in 1979 and to the positive and (mostly) negative ramifications of that policy (Vallin 2016; Jiang, Li and Sánchez-Barricarte 2016).
Four Indian states with large Muslim populations have already passed versions of a “two-child policy.” What’s more, built into many of these policies are incentives for families to have just one child. Urban middle-class couples face mounting financial pressure, including the cost of raising children and of caring for the elderly. Factual evidence has shown that a child limit greatly reduces the fertility rate, the unemployment rate, and is healthy for the planet. Requiring a child limit is usually successful in lowering the fertility rate but is also controversial and hard to mandate (especially when other strategies to lower the population exist). Despite the obstacles, one can conclude that a child limit is necessary in eliminating the issue of overpopulation in India. “Educating girls is the most effective contraceptive,” she said, pointing to data showing that Indian women with 12 years of schooling have no more than two children, while those with no education have an average of three, according to the latest survey results.
(C) Personal Aspirations and Family Size
- Even after accounting for that, the gap between the number of children in these institutions and those entering the adoption pool is still quite high.
- When we interact being a single child with the gender of this child, the relationship is even more intriguing (tables not reported here).
- While this figure does not imply that they will necessarily stop at one child, it nevertheless reflects a new kind of ambiguity – many more women than expected are now willing to even entertain the possibility of stopping at one.
Complementing this increased sense of competition is the growing public recognition of the poor quality of education provided by a wide range of educational institutions. When barely 50 per cent of enrolled children are able to read (Pratham 2005), it is not surprising that parents seek alternatives to government schools. One way to meet these expenses is to reduce the number of children who need such investments. “Indian women with a single child are no more likely to engage in paid work than those with more children,” she says. Instead, educated couples preferred to make a greater commitment to one child than split the family’s time and resources among two or more siblings.
The magnitude of the relationship between family size and investments in children poses a striking contrast with the other relationships reported earlier. While one and two child families increase their consumption marginally and families are somewhat more likely to engage in pleasure activities such as family outings, these relationships are dwarfed in comparison to the large and statistically significant relationship between family size and investments in children. If we find that a small but significant proportion of the Indian population has always had a tendency to very low fertility, then our observation is not a sign of future trends in this family type but instead evidence of greater population heterogeneity than is expected for developing countries.
Multiple research studies have also found that sex-selective abortion — where a woman undergoes an ultrasound to determine the sex of her baby, and then aborts it if it’s a girl — was widespread for years, particularly for second or subsequent children. The abandonment, and killing, of baby girls has also been reported, though recent research studies say it has become rare, in part due to strict criminal prohibitions. However, financial inducements for doctors and the women means poorer women are pressured to undergo these procedures.
No particular increase in Muslim population, says Minister.
The Minister also ruled out that there is a higher growth in Muslim population in the country as is being projected by a section of BJP and RSS and also denied any large scale conversions. The worry here is that the coming population milestone will push India to adopt knee-jerk policies. Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and West Bengal accounted for over 50% of prospective parents in 2025, as shown in the chart below.
The Pros of a Child Limit in India
The irony is that India’s birth rate and the size of families are decreasing because of women’s own reproductive choices. Many women are getting surgical contraception after having two children (or after having a son). The rise in the number of prospective parents could be one reason behind the growing gap. Issues such as infertility are no longer the only reasons why parents consider adoption”, said Gayatri Abraham, the founder of Padme, a comprehensive adoption resource platform for Indian parents.
We have shown that holding income and education constant, families at different parity levels do not differ substantially in women’s labor participation, how much they consume or the amount of time they devote to pursing individual activities. However, smaller families tend to invest more in their children than larger families, with the greatest financial investments in children’s education being made by single child families. This paper is giving an overview on previously performed research how family-planning-policies in China (explicitly the so-called One-Child-Policy) have affected economic growth since 1979. Family-planning-policies have implications on economic growth and economic growth has implications on population growth. An interesting ethical question is, if it is allowed and desirable to limit human rights (sexual and reproductive rights) to promote decent life and economic development. China decided 32 years ago to implement a rigorous family-planning policy and they will still be affected by this decision during the coming years.
- The Juvenile Justice Act (2021) lists out a time-bound procedure for a child in Child Care Institutions (CCI) to be declared legally free for adoption.
- That is, one is tempted to think of these one child families as a movement towards greater population heterogeneity.
- In other words, there were 11 prospective parents for every child free for adoption in 2021.
- The child limit would not work in India as it did in China because it is a much more democratic country.
- Perhaps the move from TFRs of 3+ to 2 children is often merely a less extreme version of the move from 3+ to 1 child.
In this context, the observation that the primary distinction between small and large families in India lies in investments in children’s education is highly significant, a theme to which we return below. Parental aspirations for children and social mobility have existed through the ages. Our contention is that in modern India, the nature of economic development in recent decades has had much to do with the growing recourse to very low fertility that is the subject of this paper.
The results are predicted using STATA MARGINS command, holding all other variables at their mean value separately for urban and rural residents. Children in these still atypical but growing one-child families appear to be highly advantaged. They (boys as well as girls) are more likely to be sent to private schools, more likely to attend English medium schools, more likely to be aided by private tuition to supplement school learning, than their peers from larger families. At the same time, our results also suggest that the declining relevance of public schooling and increasing reliance on private education in India may be actively pushing the emergence of one or two child families. In the first category are the aspirations for oneself, that is, the parental or fertility decision-making unit. These are those material and non-material desires for personal advancement and fulfillment that are hampered by children.
The number of people living below poverty line is 22% of the population in India (United Nations). According to the Reserve Bank of India, India’s percentage in poverty is way over the world average. India ranks the first in poverty percentage (United Nations).This is a huge number and most likely caused by lack of resources for the huge population that India has.