Researchers find that education levels are an important factor in projecting a country’s population
Sometime in 2017, the UN released projections on India’s population. It said that the population would peak at around 1.675 billion people in the 2056-2066 period, and then decline slowly. However, these projections may have been at the lower end as they considered India to be a heterogeneous entity rather than a union of disparate States.
In a different study, researchers from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and the Asian Demographic Research Institute used five key dimensions of population growth. It was published recently in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences .
The UN’s Population Division had arrived at its figure by factoring in age, sex and fertility rates. This, however, hid the State-wise differences — States such as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, which have higher fertility rates, will grow much faster than, say, a lower fertility rate State like Kerala.
Five factors
While an age-sex model gives a lower projection, a State-level extrapolation (and then adding the sum of these populations) gives rise to a much higher figure, as States with high fertility rates will have an increasingly dominant effect on total fertility rates. In contrast, models which factor in educational levels give rise to lower population projections due to the link between educational levels and lower fertility rates.
In the second study, apart from age and sex, researchers also factored in the population by State, the place of residence (rural/urban), and the level of education to “comprehensively” address these issues. The factors, when combined to arrive at a figure, show the population to be touching 1.72 billion people, and peaking between 2066 and 2076.
Education, the researchers found, is an important factor, coming only behind age and sex, in projecting the population. If India’s enrolment rates “stall” and continue at levels observed today, its population could be as much as 1.79 billion by 2071. However, if the country continues increasing enrolment with the momentum seen since 1990, the population could peak at 1.72 billion.
In a statement, Samir K.C., lead author of the paper, noted that continuously improving on these population projects can underscore the need for increased investment in education and human resources.
