Causes of high birth-rate:

In India, the causes of high birth-rate can be classified in three major parts.

They are:

(A) Social factors,
(B) Economic factors and
(C) Other factors.

(A) Social factors:

1. Universality of marriage:

• In India marriage is a religious ritual. The society doubts an unmarried person and raises various questions about his/her singlehood.
• Many a times to escape from this, a man and a woman enter into the institution of marriage. Even disabled people are no exceptions.
• The number of woman marrying in India is high compared to woman of developed countries. Marriages then lead to rise in birth of children.

2. Early marriage and widow remarriage:

• Despite laws banning child marriage still it happens in many parts of our country. Since they get married very early, their fertility rate is very high and lengthy. This results in the birth of more number of children.
• India also follows a Widow Remarriage Act where in the widows are made to marry if they wish to. This also has resulted in high birth-rate.

3. Preference for a male child: Indian society is dominated by males.

Indians give more importance to sons than daughters for the following three reasons:

• People believe that male child can make the family tree grow further.
• People believe male child will support them financially during old age.
• Due to these reasons people keep on trying for a male child unless they get one. This mad rush increases the family size and hence the birth-rate.

4. Joint family system:

• People in rural areas mainly live in joint families.
• When a child is born the financial responsibility, as well as the responsibility of raising that child, is shared by all the members of the family. Hence, the child does not become a burden and so people do not hesitate to give births. This increases the overall birth-rate.

(B) Economic factors:

1. Low level of education:

• Education, especially female education and population growth has a close relationship.
• Inadequate education makes it difficult to understand the need for small families and as a result the family size tends to become large.
• Education in female and the number of children in a family have an inverse relationship all over the world.
• It has been found that compared to illiterate women, the woman who has had primary education gives birth to less number of children. This statement also holds true also while comparing women having primary education with women having middle school education.
• From these facts, it can be said that the birth-rate is high because of illiteracy and low education.

2. Low income level:

• When the income level of a family is low, the birth-rate of a child is considered to be an asset rather than a burden. Such families believe in the saying of “more the merrier”.
• Members of such families think that child born will also contribute to income of the family in future and hence they should give birth to more children. We see such mindset in people living on roadside and slums.

3. High infant mortality rate:

• Out of every 1000 children born in a given year, the number of children that die within one year of age is known as infant mortality rate.
• Infant mortality rate is quite high in India in comparison to developed countries.
• The main reasons for high infant mortality rate are poverty, less care given to girl child, lack of nutritional food, frequent abortions among women, age-old practice in the upbringing of a child, inadequate medical facilities, less gap between two children, etc.

(C) Other factors:

1. High fertility rate:

Fertility rate refers to the number of children born out of every 1000 females belonging to the age group of 15-49 years.

• High fertility is an important characteristic of Indian population.
• In 1961, on an average a women belonging to this age group used to give birth to 6 children. This fell to 3 children in 2011. Still the number is quite high.

Reason for this characteristic are:

• Early marriage leads to longer fertility period for women.
• A very less number of women belonging to this fertile group are unmarried.

2. Lack of family planning information:

• The decisions taken regarding the size of family and maintaining gap between two children based on proper understanding i.e. a planned parenthood is called family planning.
• In India, poverty, social customs and religious beliefs combined with low level of education worked as obstacles to family planning.
• Lack of knowledge regarding the tools of family planning and sometimes scarcity of such tools also leads to high birth-rate.