 World population has finally reached 8 billion. In the last 1 billion, around 177 million was contributed by India alone. In this background, there has been increasing debates going on in India about its population policy. To understand about the dynamics of all of it, you need to know about total fertility rate. Watch this video to know about total fertility rate and also about the concept of stabilization rate. The total fertility rate of the population is referred as the total number of children born or likely to be born to a woman in her lifetime. Here, the lifetime indicates the woman's child-bearing years, which is roughly between the ages of 15 to 49 years. Now let's understand about replacement level fertility. See, it is the level of fertility at which a population exactly replaces itself from one generation to the next. This replacement level fertility also indicates population stability. See, the total fertility rate of about 2.1 children per woman is called replacement level fertility. Here, 2.1 is the rate at which the population stability is achieved. Here also note that the total fertility rate lower than 2.1 children per woman indicates that a generation is not producing enough children to replace itself. So, this eventually will lead to an outright reduction in population. Let's take the case of two East Asian nations here. See, Japan and South Korea are facing this situation right now. Presently, South Korea's total fertility rate is only 0.7. If it gets continued for some more years, then there will be a huge old age population in the country with very little young population. This is all about the total fertility rate and the replacement level fertility rate. Now, we will see about India's total fertility rate. India's total fertility rate has declined from 2.2 in 2015-16 to 2.0 in 2019-21. See, this trend was revealed by the report of the fifth round of National Family Health Survey which was released in May 2022. Note that this decline is indicating the significant progress of population control measures taken by the government. As we all know, total fertility rate of 2.1 is considered as the replacement level fertility rate at which population stability is achieved. In India, this replacement level fertility rate is achieved by many states. But according to the National Family Health Survey, there are wide inter-regional variations between the states present in India. There are five states which still have not achieved a replacement level fertility of 2.1. These five states are Bihar, Mahalaya, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Manipur. Now, let's see very briefly about the evolution of total fertility rate over the past three decades in India. The total fertility rate trend in India between 1992 and 2021 declined from 3.4 to 2.0 respectively. In that, total fertility rate among women in rural areas has declined from 3.7 to 2.1. The corresponding decline among women in urban areas was from 2.7 to 1.6. This is all about the evolution of total fertility rate over the past three decades in India.