Title: Low-fertility trap: a threat to India's agile workforce

Authors: Meenakshi Duggal; Tushinder Preet Kaur

Addresses: Mittal School of Business, Lovely Professional University, Phagwara-144402, India ' Mittal School of Business, Lovely Professional University, Phagwara-144402, India

Abstract: The study deals in analysing the repercussions of the falling fertility rate in the present situation leading to a low-fertility trap in India by 2041. The reason of falling fertility rates are low infant mortality rate and high life expectancy which reflects the improvement in the family health standards. This further lead to the attainment of a stable level of population with low fertility rate over years much below to replacement level. The fertility rate exactly replacing itself from one generation to the next is replacement fertility level or sustainable level of population growth. Falling below the replacement level and being there for long period of time is the concern of the state. This is an alert to a 'low-fertility trap', a situation, where fertility level is low enough not only obstructing the future labour supply in India, but also endangering many of the socio-economic and demographic aspects of that economy. The 'low-fertility trap' and the decreasing workforce ratio is elaborated through the analysis of the projections of United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, World Population Prospects (2019) and Economic Survey (2019).

Keywords: fertility rate; low-fertility trap; replacement rate; infant mortality rate; life expectancy; workforce.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEPEE.2022.121351

International Journal of Economic Policy in Emerging Economies, 2022 Vol.15 No.2/3/4, pp.251 - 261

Received: 12 Apr 2020
Accepted: 10 Aug 2020
Published online: 07 Mar 2022 *

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