Introduction

Demographic transition, through changes in fertility, mortality, and migration, fundamentally reshapes the age composition and growth of a population. While the linkages between changes in fertility levels, human development, and economic growth remain central to the core debate on demographic transition theory and development policies, classical demographic transition models suggest that sustained fertility decline is typically embedded within broader processes of social and economic transformation, marked by improvements in child survival, upward educational mobility (especially of girls), women’s agency, and labour market opportunities (Notestein 1945; Caldwell 1982; Bloom and Williamson 1998; Drèze and Murthi 2001).

Historically, economic prosperity has been viewed as a primary catalyst for declining fertility, with even modest increases in national income correlated to reduced total fertility rates (TFR) in early-stage transitions (Dyson 2013; Sear et al. 2016). Modernisation—of which the component parts include urbanisation, educational gains, healthcare improvements, and economic diversification—further reduces the demand for large families and favours small family norms, primarily through two mechanisms (Snopkowski et al. 2016). First, reduction in infant mortality eliminates the need for high fertility to compensate for child losses, shifting parental focus from child “quantity” to “quality” (Becker 1960). Second, mechanisation and compulsory education reduce child labour (Caldwell 1982; Gibson and Mace 2006). A striking pattern thereby emerges globally: higher literacy rates, especially among women, consistently correlate with lower fertility as education reshapes reproductive behaviour by delaying childbearing, improving contraceptive use, and prioritising career aspirations (Sear et al. 2016; Skirbekk 2022).

Declining fertility reshapes population age structures and can create the conditions for a “demographic dividend,” a temporary period during which a growing share of working-age adults supports relatively fewer dependants, potentially accelerating economic growth. However, international experience shows that fertility decline alone is insufficient to realise this dividend (Bloom and Williamson 1998). The economic and human development benefits depend on complementary investments in education, employment generation, and institutional capacity. For example, several East and Southeast Asian economies, such as South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and later China, successfully translated fertility decline into rapid economic growth by synchronising demographic change with large-scale investments in schooling, export-oriented industrialisation, employment-intensive growth, and rising female labour force participation (Bloom and Williamson 1998; Mason and Kinugasa 2008; Marois, Gietel-Basten, and Lutz 2021).

In contrast, several countries in Latin America, including Brazil, Mexico, and Peru, experienced substantial fertility decline but with slower structural transformation and persistent inequality, resulting in more muted demographic dividend effects (Bongaarts 2006; Bryant 2007; Turra and Fernandes 2020). Meanwhile in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, countries such as Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria continue to experience stalled or slow fertility transitions despite improvements in female schooling and health services (Bongaarts 2006; Amo-Adjei et al. 2017; Guure et al. 2019; Götmark and Andersson 2023). These contrasting experiences suggest that while development can facilitate fertility decline, the extent to which demographic change translates into broader gains in income, health, and human capabilities depends critically on labour market expansion, institutional capacity, and gender equality (Lee 2003; Bryant 2007; Skirbekk 2022; Harttgen and Vollmer 2014).

India’s demographic transition trajectory departs significantly from these patterns, offering an intriguing opportunity to analyse and compare the pace of the demographic shift with human capital development. In contrast to western nations, where fertility transition took over a century and was contingent upon broader development, India attained it in a period of less than three decades. The transition was also marked by significant regional variations with respect to its drivers and pathways. For instance, among the East Asian economies, fertility declined alongside rapid industrialisation, employment growth in manufacturing, and rising female labour force participation (Yeung and Abalos 2025). These countries, along with European countries, achieved replacement fertility at much higher levels of socio-economic development, while China and Brazil experienced mixed trajectories (Figure 1). In Latin American countries such as Mexico and Argentina, urbanisation and the shift away from agriculture were the main contributing factors in fertility reduction (Turra and Fernandes 2020). In contrast, India attained replacement fertility at relatively low income and literacy levels with only moderate contraceptive use (especially spacing methods). The transition was heavily state-led, relying on target-oriented family planning programmes that emphasised female sterilisation rather than broader institutional improvements in education, health, women’s autonomy, and labour market opportunities.

India’s fertility decline has thus been largely decoupled from conventional development markers (James, Rajan, and Goli 2020). This led to a low-fertility regime that coexists with widespread use of informal labour and persistent rural poverty, and one of the world’s lowest female workforce participation rates, as well as deep-seated regional and gendered disparities in human capital (Drèze and Sen 2013; Jain, Goli, and Jana 2025). Although the rapid fertility decline proffers a demographic window of opportunity, it has not yielded broad-based economic gains (James 2011; James and Goli 2017; Jain, Goli, and Jana 2025), raising a critical question: why has India’s demographic transition failed to translate into inclusive growth?

In this paper, we attempt to answer this question by arguing that the missed opportunity to fully translate India’s demographic potential into inclusive growth stems not from the timing of the fertility decline, but from the quality and mode of its achievement. Contrary to the development-driven transitions in the Global North or East Asia (Bloom and Williamson 1998; Mason and Kinugasa 2008; Bongaarts and Hodson 2022), India’s state-led path of fertility reduction compressed the demographic transition, and weakened the link between fertility decline and human development. Consequently, India entered its demographic dividend window without the necessary institutional and economic foundations to absorb and productively employ its expanding working-age population, particularly women (Jain and Goli 2022a, 2022b).

We argue that this has generated conditions for what may be termed a “hollow demographic dividend”: a favourable age structure unsupported by the gendered human capital and labour market institutions needed for sustained growth, particularly with amplified ramifications for women. Although fertility decline has reduced the burden of childbearing, incommensurate and insufficient investment in women’s education, health, care infrastructure, and employment opportunities have severely constrained women’s economic participation and undermined the broader dividend potential (Desai 2010; Rana and Goli 2021; Park and Shin 2023; Goli et al. 2023). Within the labour force, the second-shift burden falls heavily on women, constraining their leisure time, and forcing them to either take up low-skilled work or drop out to maintain better family balance, thus leaving them more disadvantaged (Basole et al. 2023).

Situating India’s experience within a global and regional comparative framework, this study, based on national and State-level estimates, shows that India’s fertility transition was largely driven by top–down fertility control planning rather than broad socio-economic development, ultimately constraining the demographic dividend. By proposing the concept of a “hollow demographic dividend,” we highlight the fact that the fertility–development relationship is heterogeneous, context-specific, and often bi-directional. The absence of gender-inclusive development limits the translation of demographic change into sustained and inclusive economic growth, narrowing the optimal window for harnessing demographic dividends, particularly the gender dividend (Desai 2010; James and Kriti 2024; Jain, Goli, and Jana 2025).

Our analysis has important implications for accelerated population-ageing scenarios and associated challenges. Without urgent corrective investments, especially in women-centred human capital, care systems, and employment creation, India risks entering an era of rapid ageing of the population without first accumulating the economic and social resources required to sustain it. In this sense, India’s demographic transition offers a cautionary lesson not only for India, but also for other societies pursuing fertility decline without commensurate investment in human empowerment. Fertility reduction alone does not generate prosperity; development does.

Database and Methodology

This study employs a critical review framework complemented by descriptive empirical analysis, integrating multiple nationally representative datasets to examine fertility transition and its linkage with human development in India. The core data sources include all available rounds of the National Family Health Survey (1992–93 to 2019–21), which provide detailed information on fertility, contraceptive behaviour (Figure 2), and health outcomes, and the Sample Registration System (SRS), which offers continuous State-level series on fertility, mortality, and under-five mortality across multiple decades (ORGI 2003, 2013, 2014, 2025). To capture the socio-economic conditions, the study uses female literacy data from rounds of the decennial Census of India (1991, 2001, 2011), supplemented by recent estimates from the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS, rounds up to 2023–24). Female labour force participation rates are derived from the National Sample Survey Office’s (NSSO) Employment–Unemployment Surveys (earlier rounds) and PLFS (for recent years) (ORGI 1993, 2024; Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation [MoSPI] 2023a; 2024). Additionally, State-level per capita income data (both current and constant 2011–12 prices) are sourced from the Reserve Bank of India’s Handbook of Statistics on Indian States (up to 2022–24) (RBI 2022, 2024).

Methodologically, the study aligns key socio-economic and demographic estimates, such as per capita income, female literacy, female labour force participation, and under-five mortality, with the specific year in which each Indian State achieved replacement-level fertility (TFR = 2.1). This temporal matching enables a precise assessment of the development conditions at the point of fertility transition across States. In addition, long-term demographic projections are incorporated using the United Nations’ World Population Prospects (2024 revisions), extending the analysis up to 2101 to assess future age structure changes, population ageing, and the sustainability of the demographic dividend. The study relies on descriptive, comparative, and cross-State analytical techniques; does not employ causal econometric modelling; and focuses on identifying systematic patterns, regional divergences, and deviations from classical demographic transition theory through global comparisons, supplemented by global datasets (viz. World Population Prospects and World Bank data) wherever required (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO] 2015; United Nations 2024; World Bank 2023a). This approach allowed for a nuanced interpretation of India’s heterogeneous transition pathways.

Divergent Regional Pathways to Replacement Fertility

India’s demographic journey presents a mosaic of transitions occurring at varying paces across its vast geography and diverse cultural landscapes. Despite initiating a family planning programme as early as 1952, India’s fertility decline began around 1965–70 and accelerated after the 1980s. The onset of the transition coincided with shifts in the family planning policy (e.g., establishment of a Family Planning Department in 1966). The southern States led the fertility transition, reaching below-replacement fertility by the 1990s or early 2000s (Arokiasamy and Goli 2012; Srinivasan 2017; Rana and Goli 2021; Shekhar, Goli, and Mishra 2023). However, even among the southern States, different modes of transition were observed, with Kerala affirming the human development path towards achieving fertility transition, and Tamil Nadu and subsequently erstwhile Andhra Pradesh following a distinct path with relatively low socio-economic development (James 2011). By 2023, 17 out of 22 major States had experienced below-replacement-level fertility, while five northern States (Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh) were yet to achieve replacement-level fertility (ORGI 2025). The consequences of this decoupling are evident in India’s starkly uneven regional fertility transition trajectories (Shekhar, Goli, and Mishra 2023: Table 1). While early declines aligned with human development gains, later phases (especially post-1990) revealed stark deviations from this pattern, prompting a re-evaluation of transition drivers.

Our comparative assessment of Indian States’ fertility transitions and their relative socio-economic standing, as shown in Table 1, reveals three distinct pathways to replacement-level fertility (TFR = 2.1), each shaped by varying combinations of female literacy and employment, per capita income, and child survival rates. Early achievers like Kerala, which emerged as India’s pioneering case of fertility decline, closely reflected the classical human development pathway described in demographic transition theories, with fertility reduction rooted in sustained investment in education and health, and gender equity (Notestein 1945; Davis 1963). By 1988, the State achieved replacement-level fertility alongside exceptional social indicators: relatively low per capita income (Rs 8,000 at current prices), exceptionally high female literacy (86 per cent), and high overall literacy rate (over 85 per cent) (Krishnan 1976; Bhat and Rajan 1990); but moderate female labour force participation (34 per cent) and higher infant or under-five mortality rates, as compared to developed nations (United Nations, 2024; World Bank, 2023a). Kerala’s success validates the axiom that sustained fertility decline requires investments in education, health, and gender equity (James 1999; Dev, James, and Sen 2002; James 2011; Shekhar, Goli, and Mishra 2023).

Yet Kerala has remained an outlier rather than a blueprint, with subsequent fertility declines in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Jammu and Kashmir diverging sharply from Kerala’s high-literacy pathway, revealing clear anomalies in India’s demographic transition. Tamil Nadu attained replacement-level fertility – the second Indian State to do so after Kerala – in 1993 at a slightly higher per capita income (Rs 86,000 at constant prices, 2021–22) than Kerala, but with a relatively lower female literacy rate of 61 per cent. Similarly, Jammu and Kashmir (with 57 per cent literacy in 2010) and Andhra Pradesh (with 59 per cent literacy in 2004) attained replacement-level fertility at substantially lower literacy levels but higher per capita incomes than Kerala. This transition often occurred alongside relatively high under-five mortality (U5MR): for example, Tamil Nadu achieved below-replacement-level fertility at U5MR of 78 and weak alignment with indicators of women’s empowerment. Such patterns suggest that targeted family planning programmes, cultural shifts or policy innovations enabled fertility decline even where social development was lacking (James 2011; Srinivasan 2017). Andhra Pradesh, for instance, transitioned early despite modest literacy and high mortality levels, underscoring the impact of aggressive health interventions (e.g., sterilisation camps and incentives). These distinctions challenge the conventional premise that improvements in education and socio-economic conditions precede fertility decline.

Late achievers such as Gujarat (2019) and Haryana (2019) attained replacement fertility at significantly higher income levels (per capita incomes of Rs 1,15,000 and Rs 1,24,000, respectively, at constant prices), despite female literacy rates comparable to or even higher than the early achievers, though falling short of Kerala’s threshold. This suggests diminishing returns from economic growth on fertility decline in contemporary transitions. Several northern States continue to lag behind in both fertility transition and human capital accumulation, producing a fragmented demographic landscape.

Two critical insights emerge from these divergent pathways. First, child survival appears to be a necessary determinant. No State achieved TFR = 2.1 before reducing U5MR below 80 per 1,000 live births, confirming that fertility decline is contingent on improved child survival, in accordance with Kingsley Davis’s proposition (Davis 1963). While the TFR stands at 2.4 per woman, U5MR at the global level has already reached around 37 per 1,000 live births. However, the trajectories of Indian States diverge sharply in timing and prerequisites. Andhra Pradesh (2004) and Odisha (2015) transitioned at lower literacy rates (59 per cent and 71 per cent, respectively) and higher U5MR (63 and 57, respectively) than that predicted by classical models, likely due to aggressive family planning programmes and cultural diffusion of small family norms. This is in contrast to Maharashtra (2006) and West Bengal (2015), where the transitions aligned more closely with human development gains (literacy > 75 per cent, U5MR < 40).

Secondly, the economic threshold for fertility decline has risen markedly over time. Kerala’s fertility transition in 1988 occurred at an estimated per capita income of about Rs 79,000 (at 2021–22 constant prices), which was substantially lower than the thresholds observed in 2019 for Gujarat (Rs 1,15,000) and Haryana (Rs 1,24,000). This suggests that States such as Kerala achieved fertility decline at relatively low income levels because they invested early in social-sector development, particularly in female literacy, public health, child survival, and related socio-demographic transformations. In contrast, contemporary fertility transitions (for example in Gujarat, Haryana, Delhi, etc.) appear to require much higher income levels, partly because rising aspirational costs of child-rearing now interact with slower or less broad-based progress in these key social development indicators.

Economic progress alone is not enough to reduce birth rates. India’s experience shows that targeted policy interventions can accelerate demographic change independent of economic growth. Andhra Pradesh is an example of this, where focused health measures have helped speed up the transition. However, such approaches may not be sustainable without investments in education and women’s empowerment (James 2011; Srinivasan 2017).

The uneven pace and timing of fertility transitions, subject to State-level structural characteristics, point to demographic challenges that vary across regions in India. Economically backward northern States remain young but risk missing their dividend window due to lagging human capital (Kulkarni 2021), while economically advanced southern States face rapid ageing challenges alongside a shrinking workforce without having fully realised their demographic opportunity and experienced sufficient economic gains (James and Kriti 2024).

As a result, India faces a compressed and uneven demographic window, wherein some regions experience premature population ageing without sufficient economic maturity, while others risk missing the demographic dividend due to persistent deficits in education, skills, and employment. These patterns suggest that State-specific drivers, such as targeted family planning programmes, cultural shifts or policy innovations, enabled declines despite inadequate social development.

The literature also suggests that regional norms related to ideal family size could operate independently of educational attainment, implying that literacy rates alone may fail to adequately capture women’s autonomy in decision-making (James and Goli 2016; Shekhar, Goli, and Mishra 2023). This divergence suggests that India’s fertility transition cannot be explained by a single, unified theory – a proposition supported by earlier work (Arokiasamy and Goli 2012; Visaria 2022; Park et al. 2023).

Alternative Explanations of the Paradox or Differential Pathways

Contraceptive Access Versus Development in Fertility Decline: The Paradox

The demographic success of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh illustrates that despite lagging behind in certain human development indicators, fertility decline can be accelerated through effective programmatic interventions. In both States, the success of early fertility decline was linked to target-driven family planning campaigns (Srinivasan 2017), reflecting administrative effectiveness in centralising contraceptive delivery. This hastened decline in fertility beyond what might have been expected from gradual socio-economic improvement alone. However, this approach raises critical questions regarding its sustainability, and, specifically, whether fertility decline occurs without concurrent gains in foundational factors such as women’s education or child survival (James and Goli 2016). It also raises a further question regarding the underlying drivers of fertility reduction: was the decline an outcome of women’s own choices or a result of pressure from government programmes?

Modern contraceptive prevalence (mCPR) at replacement fertility varies widely (45–65 per cent) across Indian States. Early achievers like Kerala had high mCPR (60–65 per cent), while later States reached replacement with lower mCPR (45–55 per cent), highlighting diverse pathways where socio-economic factors, not just contraception, drove the fertility decline. India’s modern contraceptive composition is heavily dominated by female sterilisation, which constitutes up to 74 per cent of all contraceptive methods used, reflecting a terminal-method bias in family planning. Spacing methods such as pills, condoms, and intrauterine devices (IUDs) remain underutilised despite rising awareness (International Institute for Population Sciences [IIPS] and Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) 2021; Misra et al. 2021). The bias towards/focus on sterilisation limits women’s reproductive choice and indicates persistent programmatic emphasis on limiting rather than spacing births, which has drawn sustained ethical criticism (Rana and Goli 2021) as it places a disproportionate burden on poor and rural women, subjecting them to target-driven pressures and unsafe procedures (Visaria 1999; Misra et al. 2021). This reflects a glaring policy contradiction: despite India’s endorsement of rights-based frameworks such as the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), its sterilisation programme has often prioritised demographic targets over women’s reproductive autonomy (Rana and Goli 2021).

There are, thus, several unresolved questions, as follows. (1) Is it desirable to achieve fertility decline without concurrently achieving human development and gender development prerequisites? (2) Are such shifts leading to a “hollow demographic dividend” – a condition where a large working-age population without adequate education, skills, and employment opportunities transforms a potential demographic dividend into a social crisis – given that fertility reductions are not occurring in a context of parallel investments in job creation and skill-building for women (Goli and Pandey 2010; James and Goli 2016)?

It may be pointed out that emerging research from Africa challenges the assumption that contraceptive access alone drives fertility transition. While full subsidies demonstrably increased contraceptive use, they consistently failed to reduce overall fertility rates (Dupas et al. 2025; Bau et al. 2024), indicating that deep-seated, non-financial barriers, such as entrenched cultural norms and preference for large families, pervasive fear of side-effects of contraceptives, and restrictive patriarchal norms prove to be far more persistent obstacles than mere supply-side constraints (Munshi and Myaux 2006; de Silva and Tenreyro 2020).

This evidence strongly suggests that underlying fertility desires frequently outweigh access, as families may rationally prioritise children as crucial sources of old age security or household labour, rendering isolated contraceptive programmes ineffective without parallel and transformative shifts in social norms and economic incentives (Pritchett and Summers 1994; Bongaarts 2006). Our review points to the fact that in the Indian context too, despite a decline in fertility, the quality of family planning, as well as reproductive, maternal, child, and adolescent healthcare are not at satisfactory levels due to poor investment in public health (Goli et al. 2021; Misra et al. 2021; Goli et al. 2022).

A New Demographic Era: Post-Transitional Demographic Regimes

To understand post-transitional fertility regimes, research must examine specific features of different States. With a national TFR of 1.9, 17 States in India now have below-replacement-level fertility, while 10 States stand at 1.5 or lower. This is particularly true for urban centres where TFR levels now parallel ageing European societies (Table 2). At the same time, life expectancy at birth for 2019–23 for India was 70.3 years, with a notable rural–urban and inter-state divide. Kerala recorded the highest life expectancy (75.1 years), followed by Himachal Pradesh and Delhi, while Chhattisgarh exhibited the lowest life expectancy (64.6 years). As a result of females gaining their biological survival advantage post-1995 (Goli et al. 2024), females consistently outlived males across all regions, reflecting the feminisation of ageing. States with relatively high TFR, such as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, generally had lower life expectancy, reflecting the standard demographic transition where improved survival often accompanies declining fertility. The continued urban advantage (Table 2) further underscores disparities in health infrastructure and socio-economic conditions (Goli et al. 2024).

While improvements in longevity are significant, it is the sharp reduction in births (fertility) that drives larger and faster shifts in the population pyramid, as compared to declining mortality. Lower mortality, particularly in childhood, initially creates a youth bulge as more children survive. But sustained fertility decline is what accelerates the transition towards a larger working-age population relative to both children and the elderly. This shift in the age composition – specifically, a growing proportion of the population in economically active age-groups (typically 15–64) – is the foundation of the potential “demographic dividend” (Kulkarni 2021; International Labour Organization [ILO] and United Nations Development Programme [UNDP] 2022).

Migration, the third component, could be an engine of a “third demographic transition”¹ (Coleman, 2006), but plays a minimal role in shaping the national overall age structure as compared to powerful trends in fertility and mortality. Therefore, India’s current window of opportunity to harness the “demographic dividend” stems primarily from the rapid pace and scale of its fertility decline, significantly lowering dependency (Mehrotra 2020b; James, Kulkarni, and Rana 2024; Jain, Goli, and Jana 2025). However, the data presented in Table 2 suggest that inter-state and rural–urban variations in in-migration rates are sizeable: in urban areas, they are consistently higher, reflecting labour market pull and structural transformation. States such as Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Kerala, and Maharashtra exhibit higher in-migration than Bihar, Assam, and Uttar Pradesh. Overall, in-migration in India is economically driven, selective, and reinforces regional and urban inequalities. With shifts in age structure and demographic divergence, States with older populations and better economic activities continue to receive populations from States with younger populations (James and Goli 2016).

Fourthly, the narrative of India’s demographic profile (Figure 3) has dramatically shifted the national discourse from anxieties about population control to emerging challenges of rapid demographic ageing, shrinking labour pools in economically advanced States, and growing regional disparities in the age structures of populations. The national discourse is centred on a “demographic dividend” – declining fertility has created ideal conditions for a demographic dividend over a 20 to 30-year period, where a larger working-age population supports fewer dependants (James and Kriti 2024). However, three important caveats, i.e. economic precarity, a gendered demographic dividend, and the risk of premature demographic ageing, limit this optimism (Jain, Goli, and Jana 2025).

The early fertility success of advanced southern States such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu has led to acute labour shortages in key sectors due to shrinking working-age populations and rising elderly dependency ratios, demonstrating that the dividend window can close rapidly in the absence of sustained human capital investment for enhancing the working-life expectancies of older adults as a low-fertility crisis emerges (Chakraborty and Goli 2025). Even here, the challenges are distinct, contingent on a broader socio-economic context. Kerala, despite having the highest female literacy (92.6 per cent) and life expectancy (75.1 years) among Indian States, which are key drivers of its low fertility and rapid ageing, exhibits a low female labour force participation rate (LFPR) of just 33.4 per cent, reflecting the paradox of high education not necessarily translating into workforce participation. This, alongside high out-migration (particularly to the Gulf countries), is a strain on the State’s fiscal capacity, because constrained local economic absorption increases the dependence on remittances and simultaneously raises the demand for care provision (IIPS and United Nations Population Fund [UNFPA] 2023; Chakraborty and Goli 2025). Tamil Nadu, on the other hand, is slightly better off in terms of internal labour absorption owing to a stronger industrial base and in-migration, yet it exhibits a similarly low LFPR (35.2 per cent), pointing to a shared gender constraint across economically advanced States. In contrast, Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim show that higher female LFPR (56.2 per cent and 56.9 per cent, respectively) is achievable, even as States like Bihar and Haryana lag in both literacy and LFPR, thereby limiting their dividend potential (Table 3). Ultimately, these indicators confirm that regional disparities in human capital and labour absorption will determine whether the dividend is realised, or whether premature ageing, already visible in the advanced States, becomes the dominant challenge.

The Gendered Human Development Deficit

One major pathway of achieving the demographic dividend is through increased women’s labour force participation in productive employment, which depends on better investment in women’s education and skill building.

India has made remarkable progress in educational access, with the gross enrolment ratio (GER) reaching 88 per cent at the secondary level (Pratham Education Foundation and Annual Status of Education Report [ASER] 2023) and nearing universalisation at the primary level. However, this overall quantitative success masks a profound variance between the progress of males and females, as well as a crisis of quality and a failure to translate schooling into meaningful opportunity, particularly among females and persons from marginalised groups. Assessments like ASER and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) consistently reveal alarmingly low foundational skills, with millions of children passing through the system without acquiring basic literacy and numeracy (World Bank 2023a, 2023b). This learning crisis renders higher education inaccessible or ineffective, fundamentally undermining the quality of the future workforce. This is likely to be more so for females than for males, due to social norms that restrict girls’ mobility to attend colleges and universities that are farther away.

Moreover, the transition from education to decent employment is fraught with obstacles, including skill mismatches, inadequate vocational training, and a scarcity of quality jobs (Mehrotra 2020a). According to the Periodic Labour Force Survey Annual Report 2023–24, the labour force participation rate and worker-population ratio among persons aged 15 years and above in India were 60.1 per cent and 58.2 per cent, respectively. The unemployment rate among educated persons aged 15 years and above, defined as those having secondary education and above, was 7.1 per cent. Further, the unemployment rate among youth aged 15–29 years was 10.2 per cent, with substantially higher unemployment among urban females (20.1 per cent) than urban males (12.8 per cent) (MoSPI 2024). This chasm between educational attainment and labour market participation was starkly evident in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. Despite the presence of a significant number of female STEM graduates, only an estimated 12 per cent entered the formal workforce (ILO and UNDP 2022). In 2018, women comprised 43 per cent of STEM graduates (higher than 34 per cent in the US in 2016, 32 per cent in Australia in 2017, and 28 per cent in Germany in 2017), but they accounted for less than a third (27 per cent) of the STEM workforce, on account of high female attrition rates, particularly in engineering, gender bias in recruitment, and other such social biases. In contrast, men exhibited higher rates of labour market entry in STEM as well as greater continuity in such careers, resulting in a pronounced gender gap in workforce participation. The above suggests that women’s participation in the labour force is limited not so much due to a lack of qualified women, but because of deep-seated systemic barriers, including pervasive workplace discrimination, safety concerns in public and work spaces, restrictive gendered social norms, unpaid domestic labour, and insufficient support structures for childcare or caregiving (ILO and UNDP 2022).

India’s rapid fertility decline has undoubtedly created the necessary age structure needed to realise a potential demographic dividend, but this opportunity is severely constrained by deep-rooted gendered structural barriers. The immediate challenge is the unmet employment imperative: despite approximately 12 million youth entering the workforce annually (roughly 5 million females and 7 million males), the economy fails to generate sufficient quality jobs (MoSPI 2022; ILO and Institute for Human Development [IHD] 2024). The situation is especially severe for women. A lack of growth in formal jobs, major gaps between skills and market needs, and a large informal sector threaten to leave much of this potential workforce either jobless or in poor-quality employment, which erode the expected economic benefits (Desai 2010; Mehrotra 2020a, 2020b; Mehrotra and Parida 2023; Hirway 2024).

The family welfare and health sectors, in general, reflect the historical prioritisation of fertility reduction over holistic well-being. While family planning services, particularly female sterilisation, receive sustained focus, investments in comprehensive reproductive health, preventive care, and nutrition lag severely (Rao 2016; Goli et al. 2021). This imbalance manifests in persistently high maternal mortality ratios (MMR) in the country, accounting for nearly 1 in 10 global maternal deaths (Goli et al. 2022).

The progress made by India in reducing maternal mortality in line with SDG target 3.1 (“Reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100,000 live births”), a significant share of maternal deaths, which are largely due to gaps in access to quality antenatal care, skilled birth attendance, and timely emergency obstetric services (Goli et al. 2022), remain preventable. India’s MMR at 88 per 100,000 live births (ORGI 2025) is far higher than that of nations with comparable economic development, such as Brazil (67 deaths per 100,000 live births) and Vietnam (around 48 deaths per 100,000 live births), which have achieved better maternal health outcomes through stronger primary healthcare systems and wider access to institutional deliveries. Compounding this is the devastatingly high prevalence of anaemia among women – 57 per cent among women aged 15–49 (IIPS and MoHFW 2021) – that is a direct consequence of underinvestment in women’s nutrition, health education, and access to quality primary healthcare. Chronic anaemia severely affects cognitive development, physical stamina, and productivity, and increases risks during pregnancy, creating a vicious cycle that constrains women’s life choices and economic contribution. Furthermore, underfunding of primary health centres, critical shortages of qualified personnel (especially specialists and nurses in rural areas), and fragmented service delivery persistently limit access to essential healthcare beyond family planning, perpetuating poor overall health outcomes (Rao 2016).

Despite achieving the biological advantage of survival, women continue to suffer a higher disease and disability burden, often referred to as the mortality–morbidity paradox (Goli et al. 2024). These problems are especially concerning because women are over-represented in India’s health-sector workforce, yet continue to face gender bias and poor working conditions (Basole et al. 2023). Although women make up the majority of healthcare workers in India, they hold only 18 per cent of leadership positions. This shows that employing women alone does not ensure gender equality, especially when leadership remains unequal (Joshi et al. 2024; Dasra 2023).

The consequence of these policies is a persistent human development deficit that is strongly gender-biased. Reducing fertility was treated as an end in itself, rather than one component of a broader strategy to empower individuals, especially women, through education, health, and economic opportunities. The narrow family planning approaches helped achieve fertility targets, but failed to dismantle the underlying structural constraints that prevent people, particularly women, from realising their full potential. This deficit is not merely a social failing; it represents a massive unrealised economic potential, hindering India’s ability to harness its demographic transition for broad-based prosperity (James and Goli 2016; James 2022; Jain, Goli, and Jana 2025).

Moving Beyond Fertility Transition: Navigating India’s Low-Fertility Reality: Challenges and Policy Imperatives

Harnessing the full-fledged demographic dividend demands transformative policies that move decisively away from fertility control and TFR targets, and towards women’s agency and enhancement of human capital. This requires that the human development deficit in all spheres, particularly among females, is aggressively addressed. Simultaneously, the systematic dismantling of barriers to female economic participation is paramount, necessitating investments in childcare infrastructure, ensuring workplace safety and flexibility, challenging restrictive social norms, strengthening gender equity and quality in healthcare systems, and extending social security to the vast informal sector. Furthermore, bridging stark regional divides is critical, by implementing tailored strategies to accelerate human development and job creation in youthful States, while supporting ageing States in adapting social security systems, healthcare for the elderly, and managing labour shortages. While the rapid pace of fertility decline has opened a critical window of opportunity, the quality of India’s transition and the realisation of its economic promise hinge on decisive action to address these interconnected challenges before the window inevitably closes (Goli and Pandey 2010).

Given heterogeneous demographic transition regimes, regionally tailored strategies are essential to address the divergent challenges of the ageing southern States and the youth bulge in northern States. The alternative, i.e. a “demographic deficit” wherein ageing populations strain resources without prior wealth accumulation, looms ever larger as a significant concern. Therefore, India must seriously consider harnessing the “second demographic dividend” from an ageing population as many East Asian countries have done, and prepare to leverage the “silver economy” through better investments in healthy ageing and skill enhancement for later years, and in technology-aided ageing-friendly infrastructure (Mason and Kinugasa 2008; Yeung and Abalos 2025). India’s fertility transition has unlocked the potential, but realising lasting prosperity depends on policies that match the scale of its demographic transformation and actively enable women’s full economic participation (Desai 2010; James and Goli 2016; MoSPI 2023b).

Finally, it is important to note that while a healthy support ratio, where sufficient working-age individuals sustain older populations, benefits any society, an increase in the old-age dependency ratio will be an inevitable outcome of demographic change. Sustained low fertility rates (below replacement level) pose risks to both the economy and social stability. However, reversing declining fertility trends remains globally ineffective. No nation has successfully achieved it (Myrskylä, Kohler, and Biliari 2009), and pro-natalist policies like China’s three-child initiative often backfire. India reflects this reality: beyond the southern States, most of the northern, eastern, and western regions now report below-replacement fertility rates. Urban centres already exhibit “lowest–low” (TFR < 1.4) or “ultra-low” (TFR < 1.2) rates; rural fertility, on the other hand, is relatively high due to a lingering preference for a son (Shekhar, Goli, and Mishra 2023). Critically, imposing fertility targets violates women’s reproductive agency and ignores complex modern constraints such as rising costs of education, healthcare, and housing, alongside shifting aspirations towards self-actualisation over traditional obligations (Chakravorty, Goli, and James 2021; Goli and Kriti 2024).

India must pursue sustainable strategies to address low fertility. First, it must stabilise the near-current fertility levels (TFR 1.6–2.0) by dismantling structural barriers: reduce motherhood penalties through gender-egalitarian labour markets, redistribute domestic burdens, and alleviate childcare and housing costs. Emerging evidence suggests that in India, as in many parts of the world, people continue to desire children but are increasingly choosing to delay or limit childbearing because raising a family appears untenable under current social and economic conditions. The UNFPA’s State of World Population 2025 report notes that nearly one-fifth of reproductive-age adults globally anticipate having fewer children than they would prefer, largely due to financial insecurity, housing instability, rising costs of living, and broader concerns about the future (UNFPA 2025). At the same time, infertility is rising, driven in part by delayed childbearing as individuals pursue higher education, establish careers, and seek economic stability before starting families – patterns well-documented across South Asia for more than a decade (Mascarenhas et al. 2012).

Secondly, India must aggressively prepare for rapid ageing due to its uniquely swift demographic transition, high economic-adjusted old-age dependency ratios², and ageing with poor social protection. India’s GDP per capita has increased manifold, but there have been no real changes in old age pensions (Rani, Goli, and Reddy 2025). Considering the reality of rapid ageing, it is important to build ageing-adaptive infrastructure, healthcare, and social security. As demographic shifts accelerate, resource efficiency and long-term planning become paramount. At the same time, promoting “healthy and active ageing” via robust healthcare, sustainable employment, and pension systems is essential to mitigate dependency burdens. Ultimately, enabling voluntary parenthood, not coercion, through systemic support for work–life balance and affordability align with maintaining individual dignity and demographic realism. Also, “care poverty,” which is increasingly non-overlapping with economic poverty, should be addressed with policies beyond conventional social welfare policies such as building institutionalised community care for older populations (Nair and Goli 2025). This demands a reimagining of care systems, including formalising the care economy, supporting unpaid caregivers, expanding community-based services, and ensuring equitable access to long-term care, especially for the elderly and persons with disabilities. Adjusting to an ageing population (through policies like extended retirement, healthcare, and silver economy investments) is required. Governments must focus on harnessing the “silver dividend,” leveraging older adults’ skills and savings, rather than attempting to alter entrenched demographic patterns (Park and Shin 2023; Jain, Goli, and Jana 2025; Chakraborty and Goli 2025).

Conclusion

India is undergoing a demographic transition with steady gains in life expectancy and declining mortality. Yet the most transformative force has been its rapid fertility decline (TFR 1.9); fertility has fallen at the second fastest pace among the world’s most populous nations. While the country has achieved the mechanical prerequisite for a demographic dividend, namely a swelling working-age population, its persistent failure to convert this shift into broad-based prosperity exposes profound flaws in its development paradigm. Compounding this, financial constraints and rising living standards are leading many couples to delay or forego childbearing. This critical disconnect stems from four deeply entrenched policy misalignments that have prioritised numerical targets over human agency. These are as follows.

First, India’s family planning paradox arises because population control is often mistaken for real empowerment. By excessively relying on female sterilisation, India achieved rapid fertility reduction but actively undermined reproductive agency, leaving patriarchal norms unchallenged and failing to catalyse gains in female workforce participation or household decision-making power. As recommended by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA 2025), the country needs to shift from restrictive fertility and contraceptive targets, which undermine women’s autonomy. At the same time, delayed childbearing, shaped by rising education and financial precarity, has contributed to increasing infertility, producing a growing mismatch between desired and achieved family size. A substantial number of families now have fertility rates lower than the desired rates.

Second, despite high levels of female schooling (88 per cent secondary school enrolment), weak links to employment limit women’s participation in the labour market. The gender segregation in higher secondary stream choice remains deeply persistent in India, particularly in access to science education. Girls are significantly less likely to choose science streams despite similar academic ability. The evidence further shows that such educational segregation later translates into unequal labour market outcomes, occupational sorting, and wage disparities, reinforcing long-term gender inequality in employment and earnings (Sahoo and Klasen 2018). World Bank estimates indicate that India forfeits 2.8 per cent of its annual GDP growth, equivalent to Rs 7.5 billion, due to gender gaps in employment, while McKinsey projected that by 2025, every 10 per cent increase in female labour force participation could inject USD 700 billion into India’s GDP. States with higher women’s workforce participation empirically demonstrate 1.5 per cent faster GDP growth and gender-equitable firms report 21 per cent higher profitability, underscoring that gender inclusion is not welfare but endows a competitive economic advantage (McKinsey Global Institute 2015).

Third, gender equity is often sidelined as a peripheral social issue instead of being addressed as a key macroeconomic priority (Hirway 2024). Gender-responsive budgeting (GRB), introduced in India in 2005–06, aimed to integrate gender equity into fiscal policy and public expenditure. Evidence shows that States implementing GRB achieved greater improvements in girls’ primary school enrolment, although economic growth alone did not ensure gender equality (Stotsky and Zaman 2016). Despite the expansion of the Gender Budget Statement, only around 5 per cent of the Union Budget expenditure effectively reaches women and girls, with persistent issues of under-reporting and weak implementation (Mehta 2020). This is illustrated by the negligible allocation in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), now called as Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-G RAM G), to care infrastructure (< 2 per cent), the low proportion of PM-SVANidhi entrepreneurial loans disbursed to women (18 per cent), and the paltry share of corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds directed towards gender-transformative programmes (14 per cent) (MoSPI 2023b; MoSPI 2023c; Ministry of Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises 2023). Critical sectors such as infrastructure, transportation, and energy remain poorly gender-integrated. Moreover, declining gender budget shares and gaps between allocations and actual spending indicate limited fiscal commitment to gender equity in India’s development strategy (Bhuta 2025).

Fourth, there is a mortality–morbidity gender paradox. Despite a rise in survival probabilities for women over men after the 1990s, women continued to suffer from a higher disease and disability burden. Their poor health status in turn affects the quality of their engagement in the workforce. Moving forward requires a fundamental shift: from population control to human capital enhancement. Gender equity must be reconceptualised as vital economic infrastructure, as critical as roads or ports. This demands sustained equitable investment in quality education (focusing on learning outcomes and relevant skill development); comprehensive healthcare, including robust reproductive health services, effective nutrition programmes, gender equity in health systems, expansion of care facilities, provision of “care credits” in recognition of unpaid labour, and significant strengthening of primary, tertiary, and geriatric care. It also requires an enabling environment that actively supports women’s full participation in the economy and society.

Only through such an all-round holistic approach can India bridge the human development gaps that exist between men and women, and truly capitalise on the demographic window of opportunity that is available to it (James and Sekher 2024; Chakraborty and Goli 2025).