The fifth edition of the National Family Health Survey confirmed signs of a demographic shift in the country.
The fifth edition of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) confirmed the signs of demographic change in India. For the first time since the start of the NFHS in 1992, the percentage of women exceeded men: it was 1,020 women per 1,000 men. In the last edition of the survey in 201516, there were 991 women for every 1,000 men. Only the decennial census is considered the official indicator of demographic trends in India and has a broader monitoring program.
NFHS surveys are smaller but are conducted at district level and are an indicator of the future. However, the male-to-female ratio at birth for children born over the past five years improved only from 919 per 1,000 boys in 201516 to 929 per 1,000, noting that boys, on average, continued to decline. ‘have a better chance of survival than girls. . Most states and Union Territories (UTs) had more women than men, according to the NFHS5.
States with fewer women than men included Gujarat, Maharashtra, Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, and Union Territories such as Jammu and Kashmir, Chandigarh , Delhi, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Ladakh. UT, however, have shown improvements in increasing the female population. A statewide break in NFHS data also shows India is on track to stabilize its population, with most states and UTs having a Total Fertility Index (TFR) below two.Severance pay of less than 2.1, or a woman who has an average of two children in her lifetime, suggests that an existing generation of a people will be exactly replaced.
Anything less than two suggests a possible decline in the population over time. States: Bihar, Meghalaya, Manipur, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh have more than two severance pay. Bihar has a severance package of three which, however, is an improvement over the 3.4 in NFHS4. Again, much like the broader trend towards feminization, severance pay in all states has improved over the past five years.
India is still on the cusp of being the most populous country in the world with the current projection of the UN population division that the Indian population will peak at around 1.6 to 1.8 billion by 2040-2050.A government report last year predicted that India would overtake China as the world’s most populous country around 2031, nearly a decade after the UN projection for 2022. 1,121 and an improvement compared to the 1,049 registered in the NFHS4. However, severance pay in Kerala has increased from 1 to 1.8.
The state has also reported a decline in the male-to-female ratio of children born over the past five years. There were 1,047 women per 1,000 men in 201516, which has now risen to 951 per 1,000 men. NFHS5 results from 22 states and UTs covered in Phase I were released in December 2020 and the rest include Arunachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi NCT, Odisha, Puducherry, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand were made public on Wednesday. The NFHS5 survey work was conducted in approximately 6.1 lakh of households sampled in 707 districts (as of March 2017) across the country; covering 724,115 women and 101,839 men to provide disaggregated estimates down to the district level.
