Chandrababu Naidu and Stalin are offering incentives to spur a baby boom. Here’s why that won’t work

In 2023, Japan added 727,277 babies to its population.

Stack that number up against the population of Japan, which was about 124.5 million that year. That is, for every 1,000 Japanese residents, there were six babies born in 2023.

Compare that to India, where 16 babies are born for every 1,000 Indians – which is about the same as the world average. This means that Japan produces far fewer babies per capita than India, or indeed the world, does. In fact, 2023 saw the fewest Japanese babies born since that country started registering this data 125 years ago.

All this speaks of a slow-motion population crisis in Japan. Its population in 2023 was lower than it was in 2022, the 12th consecutive year-on-year population decline. This trend will continue.

The crisis was foreseen, many more than 12 years ago. There is even a well-known term that signalled it: the “1.57 shock” – 1.57 was Japan’s total fertility rate in 1989, the lowest it had been since World War II. Even during the 1980s, a long boom period for the Japanese economy, the country’s government recognised that 1.57 for what it was.

Total fertility rate, or TFR, is the number of babies the average woman will produce. A TFR of 2 is considered “replacement level”, because two kids will replace their two parents and therefore the population increase will eventually flatten. (However, because some kids die, replacement level is usually listed as 2.1.)

So 1.57 was a shock in Japan because it suggested not just that ever fewer babies were being born, but that Japan’s population was getting older and would start declining. All of which would have various social consequences: fewer caregivers for growing numbers of the elderly, higher taxes as the taxable base shrinks, small towns and neighbourhoods emptying and more.

It was alarming enough that, starting in the early 1990s, Japan’s government announced a raft of schemes, suggestions and incentives aimed at couples, in the hope that they would produce more babies. These included child-care programmes, tax benefits, expanded paternity leave and even simple handouts of money – money, for producing a baby.

Japan is hardly alone. South Korea and Taiwan, several European countries, Canada and the US, Singapore and others are also faced with sinking fertility rates. Some of them have, like Japan, implemented programmes to get their citizens to reproduce more abundantly.

Yet a few decades and countless dollars on, it’s clear these schemes and incentives have not worked. Japan’s TFR has continued its free fall and is now at about 1.2. Its population count continues its free fall too: by the late 2050s, Japan will have less than 100 million people. Singapore’s TFR is 1. South Korea’s, at 0.72, is perhaps the world's lowest.

So why haven’t the schemes worked?

Well, let’s remember the situation in poorer, less-educated countries. Babies there are often like an insurance policy, an investment in the future if you like. In some places, infant mortality is so high that couples produce several babies just to shore up that investment. That is, there is a correlation between infant mortality and the TFR. This is not a surprise. For example, one study remarked:

“A strong association between child mortality and fertility is well documented in the literature. ... Couples that have lost a child are ... less likely to use contraception, tend to have more children, and have shorter birth intervals. ... Child mortality and fertility share a common set of determinants, such as mother's education, access to health services, breastfeeding practices, and less observable traits such as a preference for ‘high-quality’ children or a less fatalistic outlook on life.”

In contrast, says the same study, “Countries with low infant mortality almost always have low birth rates.”

So what do most of these countries mentioned above have in common? They are relatively rich and educated and their citizens have reasonable access to healthcare. It’s one of those facts of life that education and wealth tend to be baby-deterrents. There are studies that show that even a basic primary education adds nine months to the age at which an average Indian woman has her first child: one less possible pregnancy in her child-bearing years.

More education? She postpones child-bearing even more. And finally, better health means lower infant mortality: babies survive and their parents do not feel the need to produce more.

Young couples in such countries have priorities other than producing and raising children: higher education, demanding careers, leisure, travel, hobbies, social work, you name it. As a report in The New York Times commented, “modern families just don’t seem to want to grow larger ... Young people [who] pursue careers and build networks that normalised postponing marriage, had fewer children as they started childbearing later.”

So why pay attention to all this now, here in India? Because at least two chief ministers have spoken about the need for residents of their states to produce more babies. Chandrababu Naidu of Andhra Pradesh and MK Stalin of Tamil Nadu both head states in the relatively more prosperous south of the country. And there’s a story there.

India’s TFR is now at about 2, meaning just about replacement level. After decades of concern about our fast-growing numbers, this number suggests that the growth is slowing, that our population will plateau later this century and then start declining. But if that’s welcome, it also masks some skewed numbers within India. Some states have responded to the concerns about population growth better than others.

In particular, Tamil Nadu has reduced its TFR to 1.4; Andhra Pradesh, 1.7.

Compare those figures to: Uttar Pradesh 2.4. Rajasthan 2.4. Jharkhand 2.4. Bihar 2.98. In general, the southern states have been more successful in reducing their TFRs than the North. In other words, if slowing the growth of our population has been an Indian imperative for decades, the North has made significantly less progress than the South.

Stalin and Naidu are alarmed by the fertility numbers of their states for all the reasons Japan and South Korea are about theirs. But in their case, there’s one more elephant in the room: political representation. Of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha, Tamil Nadu has 39, Andhra Pradesh 25 and Uttar Pradesh 80. These numbers have stayed static for nearly a half-century. (Undivided Andra Pradesh had 42. After the state was bifurcated in 2014, Telangana got 17 of those seats. Similarly, undivided Uttar Pradesh had 85 and after it was bifurcated in 2000, Uttarakhand got five of those.)

These seat allocations were decided on the basis of the 1971 census, so that each state would be represented essentially corresponding to its share of the country’s population. At the time, Tamil Nadu had about 41 million people, undivided Andhra Pradesh about 43 million, and undivided Uttar Pradesh about 88 million. (As an aside, each MP was to represent about a million Indians.)

In the 1970s, India was worried about its expanding population. Our current TFR speaks for the overall effectiveness of the various programmes we have had to slow that expansion down. Still, in the half-century since, Tamil Nadu has grown to 81.5 million people, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana together (so we can compare them to undivided Andhra Pradesh) to 91.5 million, and Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand together to 251 million.

If those numbers didn’t jump out at you, this might: In the half-century, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh about doubled their populations. Undivided Uttar Pradesh nearly tripled its numbers.

If there’s a case to revisit representation in the Lok Sabha to reflect these population figures better, consider it this way: If Uttar Pradesh/Uttarakhand continue with their 85 seats, Tamil Nadu’s count will shrink to 28, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh together to 31.

Now you know what really worries Naidu and Stalin. Their states have succeeded in reining in the growth of their populations. Uttar Pradesh has not, or at least not to the degree Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh have. Yet Uttar Pradesh will be rewarded with proportionately greater representation in Parliament. Much the same arithmetic applies to other northern states.

This is why the southern chief ministers want their people to have more babies. Like Singapore and Japan, they are considering offering couples incentives.

Think of that in the light of one final set of figures. The per capita gross domestic product in Uttar Pradesh is about Rs 95,000. In Andhra Pradesh, Rs 270,000. In Tamil Nadu, Rs 315,000. The southern states are now substantially richer than Uttar Pradesh. So what Singapore and Japan found out might apply in India’s South too: trying to persuade people to make more babies is unlikely to work.

Now there may be ways Naidu and Stalin, and others concerned with the issue, can address the prospect of slipping political power. But for now, they should know. Incentives and appeals won’t produce a baby boom.

Dilip D’Souza is a writer based in Mumbai.