Editorial
Policies to reverse low fertility in India: Need for an ethics perspective
One of the measures of change in a country’s population is the Total Fertility Rate (TFR), or the average number of children a woman is expected to have during her reproductive years. A TFR of 2.1 is considered the replacement level, where the population renews itself without growing or shrinking. India’s TFR has declined from 5.2 in 1971 to 1.9 in 2024 [1]. The decline is far greater in some states, going as low as 1.4 in Andhra Pradesh (AP), and 1.3 in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal [1], with the lowest at 1.0 in Sikkim, in 2023-24 [2].
Copyright and license ©Indian Journal of Medical Ethics 2026: Open Access and Distributed under the Creative Commons license ( CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits only non-commercial and non-modified sharing in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
