Umed Singh, born around 1935. He has two sisters. Umed was able to go to a secondary school and become a policeman. Unlike his father, he had regular salary and some income from land. Umed initially had two daughters but was worried about their survival. He also wanted a son. He then had four more children, three of them were sons. However, now Umed’s eldest daughter who has trained to be a teacher does not want more than three children.”

Since 1981, birth rate had also started declining gradually, resulting in a gradual decline in the rate of population growth. Calculate the % of change over the decades 1951 to 2011 and see if this is happening in the table above.

How do we understand this trend? We use another concept called the Fertility rate (total births per woman). Total fertility rate is the number of children that is are likely to be born to a woman if she were to live to the end of her childbearing years and bear children in accordance with current patterns. If this declines, then we can say that couples are deciding to have fewer children. Factors both within the family and outside are contributing to these decisions. Examine the Graph 4

The fertility rate for India in 1961 was 5.9, which indicates that on an average each woman was likely to bear five or six children. The family decides the number of children they want depending on security, opportunities for children and social norms. There have been some changes in this outlook. Present fertility rate in India is 2.7,