Editorial: Tamil Nadu's people problem

The 2023 edition of the Sample Registration System (SRS) survey, conducted by the Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, shows that Tamil Nadu is a state in demographic transition. The state’s achievements on maternal health, infant survival, and longevity are impressive indeed, but those very successes bring along some serious long-term challenges.

Tamil Nadu’s attainments in terms of infant mortality (9 per 1,000 vs 25 nationally), institutional deliveries (nearly 95%), improved sex ratio at birth (933 vs India’s 917), and lowest elderly death rate (32.5 per 1,000) confirm the state’s status as a top implementer of the national population policy. But it will now have to pivot from population control to population management, a much taller ask in view of the complexities involved. This sets up a piquant departure: The demographic priorities for Tamil Nadu (and Kerala) are different from those of states in north India, which tend to dictate national priorities and therefore are served first. The challenge for Tamil Nadu lies in how skilfully it negotiates this divergence.

With 14% of its people aged 60 or more, Tamil Nadu has the most elderly-heavy population after Kerala. Within the next 10–20 years, this share could rise sharply to 20–25%, creating a major structural shift. As the young migrate to cities for education and work, parts of the state could develop a serious geriatric skew, leading to resource allocation distortions. As private educational and health facilities tend to chase markets that can pay, rural areas could become more underserved than they already are. The state will have to fill the gap.

Only 24.2% of Tamil Nadu’s population is below 14 years, compared to 27.4% nationally. Due to a dwindling birthrate and deferred childbearing, this trend is only likely to accelerate, bringing about a squeeze in the labour force due to fewer young people being available to replace retiring workers. The deficit can only be filled with migrant labour. Signs of this are already palpable. As migration has the potential to fuel social tensions, the administration will have to foster a climate of cultural openness for it to be seen as a solution, not a problem.

Tamil Nadu’s total fertility rate (TFR) of 1.3 (well below the replacement level of 2.1) and crude birth rate of 12 per 1,000 are among the lowest in India. This portends that the state’s population will stagnate in the next decade and begin to decline thereafter. The rising mean age of motherhood (26.5 years) will accelerate this trend. This effectively spells the end of the demographic dividend for Tamil Nadu. With a smaller workforce having to support a larger dependent population, it could face stagnation similar to ageing East Asian economies. Projections indicate Tamil Nadu could resemble present-day Japan’s demographic profile by 2045.

But Tamil Nadu has the policy chops to respond to this challenge. Some of the imperatives are obvious, such as the need to expand geriatric care infrastructure and manage migration. The more important policy corrective must be to arrest the trend of falling birthrate. What is needed is a slew of measures across the whole front of the problem, including financial incentives and tax breaks to women for having children, longer paid maternity leave, flexible work hours, and the optionality of part-time work. Housing and childcare are important factors in the decision to have children; so they should be central to Tamil Nadu’s population policy.