India's demographic profile is one of the more fascinating ones in the world. The country has been growing rapidly over the past fifty years, largely due to sharp declines in the mortality rate that have not been matched by declines in the birth rate over this period (although both rates, as we shall see, have been declining). The rapidly expanding Indian population has also become much more fluid over the past decades, with internal migration and mobility increasing significantly. Unfortunately, the increasing migration has been accompanied by a skyrocketing rate of HIV/AIDS infection, largely because sex workers and truck drivers have formed a key component of India's recent migration explosion.
As some demographic scholars have noted, "changes in fertility and mortality are asynchronous. Mortality rates (especially infant mortality rates) fall earlier and fast; fertility rates fall later and slowly" (Joshi). This means that, as a country's mortality rate falls, a bulge in the population is created. This bulge then works its way through the age-distribution ladder. First, the proportion of young people in the population rises. Then, as these young people age and the birth rate declines, the bulge works its way up the ladder and the proportion of adults of working age increases while the proportion of young people declines. Lastly, the proportion of working-age adults declines and the population of elderly people rises. This last step is currently occurring in most of the developed world (Joshi).
In India, on the other hand, the bulge remains centered on young people. As figure 1 shows, over the past fifty years the birth and mortality rates have been declining steadily in India. However, the birth rate has remained much higher than the death rate; in 1951, the ratio of births to deaths was 1.63 while in 2001 that ratio had almost doubled to 3.03.
Crude Birth Rate vs. Crude Death Rate in India
What t...