Impact of Socio-Economic Diversities on Indian Fertility: Socio-Economic Diversity: Indian Fertility

India with around 125 million populations in 2012 is the second most populated country in the world, only after China. Even though efforts have been made since long, right from 1951, immediately after independence, to restrict its high population growth, the country’s population continued growing with very high pace. India was also among the first countries to adopt family planning as its official policy, the much needed curtailment in its growth eluded the population planners of the country. Many factors have been responsible for continued high growth; those include socio-cultural and economic barriers on one side and policy, program implementation and access/affordability/choice of contraceptives barriers on the other. Other factors such as; low accessibility to health and reproductive services and continued high infant mortality instigated couples for higher family size. The present work tries to bring out the main factors which are responsible for continued high fertility and also as how much the key factors are responsible for the same. This would help policy planners to address some of the issues on priority.