The total fertility rate is :

Question

Question

This question was previously asked in

HPPSC GS 2018 Official Paper 1

The birth of women divided by the total female population
The number of births divided by the total population
The number of children a woman will likely bear in her lifetime
The births to women of a given age divided by the total number of women at that age

Answer 1

The correct answer is The number of children a woman will likely bear in her lifetime.

Key Points

The fertility rate refers to the number of live births per 1000 women in the child-bearing age group, usually taken to be 15 to 49 years.
- This is a ‘crude’ rate – it is a rough average for an entire population and does not take account of the differences across age groups.
- Differences across age groups can sometimes be very significant in affecting the meaning of indicators.
That is why demographers also calculate age-specific rates.
The total fertility rate refers to the total number of live births that a hypothetical woman would have if she lived through the reproductive age group and had the average number of babies in each segment of this age group as determined by the age-specific fertility rates for that area. Hence, option 3 is correct.

India's population is stabilizing as per the Fifth National Family Health Survey (NFHS) as the total fertility rate has decreased across the majority of the states.
Of the 17 states analyzed in the NFHS-5 data, except for Bihar, Manipur, and Meghalaya, all other states have a TFR of 2.1 or less, which implies that most states have attained replacement level fertility.
There have been some improvements in women's empowerment-related indicators.
- More women are able to participate in household decision-making in 9 states while 30% more women now have bank accounts in Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, and West Bengal.
Anemia among women remains a big concern.
- In all the states, anemia is much higher among women compared to men.

Additional Information

Female sterilization continues to dominate as the modern method of contraceptives in states like Andhra Pradesh (98%), Telangana (93%), Kerala (88%), Karnataka (84%), Bihar (78%), and Maharashtra (77%).
Sikkim recorded the lowest TFR, with one woman bearing 1.1 children on average.
Bihar recorded the highest TFR of three children per woman.
In 19 of the 22 surveyed states, TFRs were found to be ‘below-replacement, a woman bore less than two children on average through her reproductive life.