Total fertility rate, India

The average number of children a woman would bear over her reproductive life (ages 15–49) if she experienced the year's age-specific fertility rates.

Methodology

The Sample Registration System (SRS) is ORGI's large-scale demographic survey: in about 8,800 randomly selected villages and urban blocks (8,839 sample units covering about 9.0 million people in 2024, roughly 0.6% of the population) a resident part-time enumerator records births and deaths continuously, and an independent supervisor conducts a retrospective half-yearly survey. The two records are matched and unmatched events re-verified in the field (dual record system), which makes SRS India's reference source for vital rates at state level, since civil registration remains incomplete in several states. The sample is redrawn after each census; the frame in use from reference year 2014 is based on Census 2011. Source: SRS Statistical Report for the reference year, Statement 24 ('TFR (Total Fertility Rate) by Residence'), Total column, for India and the 22 bigger States/UTs (population above 10 million at Census 2011, plus Himachal Pradesh). Each value is taken from the report for its own year, not from later reports' trend tables. IHO stores the total (rural and urban combined) for V1; SRS also publishes rural and urban figures, and for some rates figures by sex, which are not yet stored. TFR is the sum of the year's five-year age-specific fertility rates multiplied by five; SRS rounds it to one decimal.

Caveats

Replacement-level fertility is about 2.1; values below it are not 'better', so IHO does not colour changes as improvements or deteriorations. Rounded to one decimal, so small real changes can show as no change or as a 0.1 step. Smaller States and UTs have no TFR estimate. Reference years 2020–2021 cover the COVID-19 pandemic: deaths rose sharply in 2021 (India's crude death rate was 7.5 against 6.0 in 2020), and fieldwork was disrupted.

Comparability

Age-standardised, so unlike the crude birth rate it can be compared across States with different age structures. NFHS publishes survey-based TFRs for a three-year reference period that differ in level. Jammu & Kashmir before reference year 2020 is the undivided State, which included what is now Ladakh (the 2018 and 2019 Bulletins print it as 'Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh'); from 2020 SRS reports the Union Territories of Jammu & Kashmir and of Ladakh separately, and IHO stores both periods under Jammu and Kashmir, so its series has a boundary break at 2020. Telangana was carved out of Andhra Pradesh in 2014; SRS reports them separately from reference year 2014, so Andhra Pradesh figures are for the residuary State throughout.

How signals are computed from this series: .