3. Regional Gaps in Demographic Transition
In India, the trend towards decreasing population is especially conspicuous in Kerala at the southern extremity of the country. The total fertility rate in 1991 in Kerala was 1.8 which was much below the population replacement level (2.05), and almost equivalent to those of developed countries in Europe, the United States, and Japan. Next to Kerala is Tamil Nadu at the southeastern tip, where the total fertility rate was 2.2 in 1991, which approaches the level of population replacement. Other than these two regions, the decline in the birth rate continues below the national average of 3.6 in Karnataka (3.1), Andhra Pradesh (3.0) in the southern area, as well as in Maharashtra (3.0), Gujarat (3.1), and West Bengal (3.2) in the mid-east area. (Union territories and smaller states are not included in the comparison.)
On the other hand, the fertility rate of India, as a whole, is raised up by the five regions in the so-called Hindi belt that contains 42% of the national population; namely, Bihar, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. The birth rates in these regions are extremely high; their total fertility rates were all above 4.0 in 1991. This includes 5.1 of Uttar Pradesh which is 180% higher than that of Kerala.
The gap between the two widened compared to 1981 where the total fertility rate of Uttar Pradesh (6.1) was 110% more than that of Kerala (2.9). While the fertility rate of the country as a whole is observed to decline, the southern areas are rather more advanced in lowering the rate, and the northern areas are behind them. The gap between the southern, middle and eastern regions and northern regions has tended to become wider after 1991 as well.
What has created such a wide regional gap in fertility rates in the same country? It cannot be explained by economic disparities or different paces of urbanization, as generally presumed. The first thing to draw attention to is that the northern states with high birth rates are all in the so-called Hindi belt, where the population speaking Hindi as mother tongue exceeds 80% of the total, which makes a clear difference from the other regions.
