Jammu & Kashmir, India’s only Muslim majority state, jointly topped the list of states in population control.

Along with West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, J&K recorded a Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of 1.6 in 2015, which was the lowest among the 22 large states for which data is available.

The information was presented in Rajya Sabha on 28th March by Anupriya Patel, minister of state of health and family welfare. According to data attached to her reply, as many as 13 of the 22 states have recorded a TFR below 2.1 children per woman, which is referred to as replacement level fertility of a population. In other words, these states are headed for negative population growth.

According to World Health Organization, TFR can be defined in the following manner.

“Total fertility rate (TFR) in simple terms refers to total number of children born or likely to be born to a woman in her life time if she were subject to the prevailing rate of age-specific fertility in the population.”

Public debates in India sometimes suggest that population growth is primarily influenced by religion. However, data put out by government over the last few years suggests that regional differences may well be far more important than religious differences.

For example, Census 2011 data showed that Muslims make up 14.22% of India’s population. In the states of J&K and West Bengal, Muslims make up 68.31% and 27.01% of the population respectively. One way of looking at the data is that two of the three states with lowest TFR have a Muslim population significantly higher than the national population.

Tamil Nadu, on the other hand, is a state where Hindus make 87.58% of the population, which is higher than their share in India’s population.

In another instance which provides evidence to suggest that variation in TFR is perhaps best explained by regional factors, Patel’s reply showed that it had fallen to 2 in Odisha, a level below the replacement rate.

In Bihar, a state which is often compared with Odisha when it comes to development measures, the TFR was a much higher 3.2 children per woman.