An uncomfortable but important topic has found its way back into the public discourse of the world’s most populous country, India. Thanks to Tesla boss Elon Musk. The American tech tycoon, who spent the weekend highlighting falling birth rates in the US and other countries such as Australia, weighed in on India’s declining fertility rate. Musk noted that India had slipped below the replacement fertility level of 2.1 births per woman, meaning couples are no longer having enough children, on average, to replace their own generation.
“India’s birth rate has fallen below replacement. Among those most educated, India’s birth rate fell below replacement many years ago,” Musk wrote on X on Saturday, sharing a graphic linked to a report from The Economist.
Musk’s post and the discussions that followed since, have made way for several important questions about India’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR).
How concerning is India’s falling fertility rate? Is India, said to be reaping a demographic dividend, headed towards the greying troubles that Japan, South Korea and parts of Europe are grappling with?
When will the impact of an ageing India become visible? Why are Indians having fewer children? Is it because life has become more expensive? Is it because women today have greater control over their lives and reproductive decisions? Or is fertility decline simply an inevitable consequence of development and women’s empowerment?
While the answers to the contributing factors are many, experts and economists are divided as well. Some economists blame rising costs. Others say development itself lowers fertility. Some point to women’s empowerment and aspirations. Others argue that couples today simply desire fewer children than previous generations did.
It is very much possible that all these factors have been working together. There’s a lack of consensus on which factor makes its impact on the dipping birth rate in India the most.
WHAT IS THE POPULATION REPORT ON INDIA SHARED BY ELON MUSK?
The report shared by Elon Musk titled, ‘India’s population will soon be falling—probably quite fast’, used the United Nations Population Fund’s 2025 State of World Population Report, which estimated India’s total fertility rate (TFR) at 1.9 births per woman.
In fact, India’s TFR has been declining steadily for decades. It dropped from a high of around 5.7 in the 1950s to 2.0 in 2019-21. In 2023-2024, it was recorded at 1.9.
A TFR of below two means that the average Indian woman (15-49 years old) is giving birth to fewer than two children in her lifetime.
Replacement-level fertility of 2.1 means that, on average, every couple has enough children to replace themselves in the next generation. If average fertility stays below the 2.1 level for a long time, the population of a country begins to age and decline.
Experts speaking to India Today Digital and on public platforms suggest that there is no single answer as to why. Or, which factor is driving the dip. Instead, India’s fertility story seems to have been influenced by various factors like economics, development, urbanisation, gender roles, aspirations and the changing idea of the family itself.
“The decline in the fertility rate generally has been a function of development,” Nilanjan Ghosh, Vice President for Development Studies at ORF, told India Today Digital. “If you look at states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, which score better on development indicators, they are also the ones where fertility has flattened much faster.” He also cautioned about a situation where India could be “ageing faster than getting richer”.
HOW CONCERNING IS INDIA’S FALLING FERTILITY RATE?
Economists are clear that India is not facing an immediate demographic crisis due to India failing to reach the desired 2.1 replacement rate. India’s population is still growing and is expected to continue growing before eventually peaking. Yet, they caution that demographic transitions take place gradually and slowly. But it is difficult to reverse once these trends are firmly established.
Economist and Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council member Sanjeev Sanyal, said he was among those warning that India should pay attention to the trend before it becomes a bigger challenge.
“Been making this point for the last two decades. It is not a ‘crisis’ yet. These things take a long time to build up. However, Indians need to understand that the peak number of live births in India was back in 2001. But for longevity gains, the population would have started to decline in the 2030s,” Sanyal posted on X.
Sanyal’s observation is important because he highlighted the relation between the current population numbers and long-term demographic momentum.
Even if India’s population continues growing for years, the number of births has already been moving in the opposite direction. Countries such as Japan and South Korea are the red flags. Vietnam abolished its two-child policy in 2025. The TFR fell over decades. Once the trend became entrenched, governments found it difficult to reverse it despite spending billions on incentives and family-support programmes.
This was highlighted by economist and a member of the PM’s Economic Advisory Council, Shamika Ravi, during a podcast on news agency ANI.
IS BIRTH RATE DECLINE IN INDIA DRIVEN BY RISING COSTS?
An answer to the question comes from economics. A senior economist, who did not wish to be named, told India Today Digital that “changing financial realities are influencing family decisions across urban India”.
“Rising living costs and the growing financial burden of raising children are among the key reasons many couples are choosing to have fewer children or delaying parenthood altogether,” he said. “Higher spending on housing, education, healthcare and childcare has increased the perceived cost of starting and expanding a family,” he added.
The emphasis on perception is also important. In many urban households, the debate is not whether a child can be fed and clothed. Parents prefer private schooling, extracurricular activities, coaching, quality private healthcare and greater financial security. So, raising children has become a more resource-intensive project than it was for previous generations of Indians. The rising aspirations also shoot up the perceived cost of parenthood.
Noida-based tech entrepreneur Akash Srivastava, reacting to Musk’s post, called the educated urban Indians “the tax-paying backbone”, adding, “It’s the productive class shrinking while the rest grows unchecked”.
“… Thanks to insane housing, education and living costs,” said Srivastava, the co-founder and CTO at Kryptos. “India must fix the incentives fast.”
But several economists argue that rising costs are only one part of the story behind India’s falling fertility rate.
WHY COUPLES IN RICHEST COUNTRIES ALSO HAVING FEWER CHILDREN?
This is where PM-EAC member Shamika Ravi offered a different perspective. Ravi, speaking to news agency ANI last week, argued that affordability cannot fully explain what is happening because some of the world’s wealthiest countries continue to struggle with extremely low fertility despite high incomes and generous welfare systems.
“In urban India, our fertility rate has been below replacement for the last 25 years. So, in urban India, young women do not want to have two kids; if at all, one. In rural India, fertility has now come down to replacement level, but that too is falling,” she said.
Ravi said that the more significant trend was not falling fertility but the diminishing number of children that people wanted now.
“What is troubling, and what money alone will not fix, is the desired number of children. How many children would people like to have? That number itself is falling,” she said.
She also challenged the assumption that fertility decisions are primarily driven by affordability.
“When people say costs are increasing, houses are small, and raising children is expensive, we should be clear that money is not the sole factor driving decisions about having children. We often portray childbearing as an economic decision limited by affordability. But people today are more affluent than they have ever been historically. Japan is one of the richest countries in the world. South Korea is even richer. Yet look at their fertility rates,” she added.
Shamika Ravi also added that these changes in demography might be reflecting deeper social and cultural changes. Once people begin desiring smaller families, financial incentives alone might not be enough to alter that behaviour, is what she underlined in the ANI podcast.
ARE WOMEN’S CHANGING ASPIRATIONS, EMPOWERMENT PLAYING A ROLE?
Many experts believe that the decline in the total fertility rate (TFR) is also influenced by the changes women have gone through financially and socially over the decades.
Women’s educational attainment has risen. More women are entering higher education, pursuing careers, marrying later and exercising greater agency over personal decisions. Fertility patterns have changed alongside these developments.
Nobel laurate Amartya Sen highlighted this relationship in his 1999 book, ‘Development As Freedom’.
A 2025 paper titled ‘Effects of Diffusion and Education on Women’s Fertility in India’ by political scientists Nandan Jha and Neena Banerjee, published in the Journal of Population Research, found that women’s education has a significant negative effect on fertility. The study concluded that as women attain more years of education, their fertility declines, while greater exposure to media, social networks and financial autonomy also tend to be associated with lower fertility.
The study found that when “power relations are skewed against women”, fertility tends to be higher, while women whose names appear on homeownership or rental papers tend to have fewer children.
New Delhi-based fintech and digital payments expert Monica Jasuja said she believed that the trend is ultimately reflective of changing attitudes towards parenthood.
“The educated may have simply concluded that bringing children into the world is a choice, not an obligation… When work demands more, costs keep rising and time becomes the scarcest resource, many people are deciding not to have children or to have fewer of them,” Jasuja, the Chief Expansion and Innovation Officer at Emerging Payments Association Asia, posted on X.
“It’s hard to argue with that logic when good parenting requires far more than just giving birth,” she added.
Jasuja’s argument is in line with a broader shift visible in many urban centres. For a growing number of couples, parenthood is no longer viewed as an automatic stage of adult life. It has become a conscious decision weighed against careers, personal goals, financial commitments and quality-of-life considerations.
ROLE OF MEN, FAMILIES, SOCIETY ON FALLING FERTILITY RATE
The fertility debate often focusses on women, but several experts say that family decisions are rarely made by women alone. The primary question is if women want children.
Women are more likely to have children when they get support from their partners, families and employers. But in many households, women still handle most childcare and housework, even if they are working full-time. For many women, this can become a reason to delay or avoid having children.
Experts of demography call it the “motherhood penalty”.
This means decisions on childbirth, in a way, reveal the organisation of a family and a woman’s say in its important aspects. A couple might be willing to have one child but reluctant to have a second if they believe the burden will fall overwhelmingly on one parent. In that sense, fertility rates are shaped by women’s empowerment and also by how society responds to that empowerment.
WHY TOTAL FERTILITY RATE ISN’T SAME ACROSS INDIA
According to the ORF’s Vice President for Development Studies Nilanjan Ghosh, India’s fertility story reveals clear geographical patterns.
“The TFR is definitely falling, there is no doubt about that. And presently, in fact, it has, as far as official statistics are concerned, it is already below the replacement level and that is bound to happen. Because after a point in time, in fact, the total fertility rate actually flattens, population growth flattens,” Ghosh told India Today Digital.
He pointed to a pronounced north-south divide in India’s fertility trends. “The southern states are flattening at a faster rate than the northern states. The population growth is much slower, in fact, in the southern states,” Ghosh added, linking the pattern to developmental indicators.
“The southern states (Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh) have higher achievements on the Human Development Index. Eventually, the decline in fertility rates has generally been a function of development,” he told India Today Digital.
This is why southern chief ministers like Chandrababu Naidu are actively encouraging families to have more children.
In other words, lower fertility for the southern states is not a sign of failure. It is a consequence of rising education, higher incomes, lower child mortality and greater female participation in society.
On the other hand, Bihar has the highest TFR in India at 2.9 children per woman. It is followed by Uttar Pradesh (2.6), Madhya Pradesh (2.4), Rajasthan (2.3), Chhattisgarh (2.2) and Jharkhand (2.1). These are the only big states that are at or above the replacement level, according to the latest Sample Registration System (SRS) Statistical Report 2024.
IS INDIA’S BIGGER DIVIDE NOW URBAN VERSUS RURAL?
Nilanjan Ghosh said he believed the urban-rural divide might be just as significant as the north-south divide in pulling down the replacement ratio.
“Apart from this north-south divide, there is also an urban-rural divide. In urban areas, the fertility rate is around 1.5, which is much lower than the replacement level,” he said.
Social settings in cities tend to delay marriages, make smaller families and more career-oriented lifestyles feasible. Housing is expensive, living spaces are smaller and raising children often requires greater financial and emotional investment.
Delhi has the lowest fertility rate in India at 1.2 children per woman, while Chandigarh’s fertility rate stands at around 1.4. Both the Centrally-administered urban territories are placed below the replacement level of 2.1.
WHEN WILL INDIA FEEL THE IMPACT OF FALLING FERTILITY RATE?
Most experts agree that the consequences would not show suddenly. It would be a gradual process spanning over years and decades. This is where Ghosh said India faced the possibility of “ageing faster than getting richer”.
He estimates that by 2050, around 20% of India’s population could be above the age of 60, amounting to nearly 30 crore people. That would significantly alter the country’s dependency ratio, increasing the share of people dependent on a shrinking working-age population.
At the same time, Ghosh argued that India should begin preparing for what economists call the “silver dividend”.
“The silver dividend is all about the ageing population being involved in the workforce and contributing to the productivity of the nation, something that Japan is already doing,” he said.
Rather than treating older citizens as dependents, policymakers should find ways to keep them economically productive through reskilling, flexible employment policies and adoption of technologies.
SO WHAT IS REALLY DRIVING INDIA’S FALLING FERTILITY RATE?
The debate sparked by Musk’s post has no single answer. There is no single factor. Several of them work together. The jusry is still out on which factor is driving the dip in TFR in India the most.
The economist, who didn’t wish to be named, pointed to rising costs. Shamika Ravi pointed to the shrinking desire to have families. Jasuja pointed to changing attitudes towards parenthood and the growing demands of modern life. ORF’s Nilanjan Ghosh said that development and urbanisation were responsible, while underlining the challenges of an ageing society. Sanjeev Sanyal reminded that demographic transitions like this unfold over decades.
Taken together, these arguments suggest that India’s fertility decline is not being driven by one force. It is being shaped by several forces moving in the same direction. People are marrying late. Women are studying longer than earlier. Urban lifestyles are changing priorities, and we see the rise of DINK (double income, no kids) couples. Parenting is demanding. Aspirations are rising, and family sizes are shrinking. While Musk’s post might have reignited the conversation, data shows that India’s fertility rate has been declining for years now.
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(With inputs from Yudhajit Shankar Das and Koustav Das)
