Nine states in India have population that are composed of ageing people higher than several Scandinavian countries like Norway, Sweden and Denmark – countries that are often held up as examples of slowing demographics.

Nine states in India have population that are composed of ageing people higher than several Scandinavian countries like Norway, Sweden and Denmark – countries that are often held up as examples of slowing demographics.

This startling fact about the demographic pattern of India has been revealed in a report on a website called IndiaSpend, a data journalism-backed analysis website.

According to the report in IndiaSpend, nine states in India have a Total Fertility Rate (TFR) below the replacement level.

TFR equals the average number of children that would be born to each woman in a given population if she lived to the end of her child-bearing age and had children. A TFR of 2.1 is considered to be the stable level – a TFR below 2.1 means that the median age of the population will go down. Effectively this means that if the TFR is above 2.1, then the median age of the population is on an ascending curve.

It comes as a surprise that four southern states – Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, that are considered to be better performing in terms of economy and development has a population that is ageing.

What does the government need to do to address the growing number of older people in the country? Govindraj Ethiraj told Firstpost, “We need to have a separate policy in place for the old in this country. We can’t keep talking about the young because we need to remember that India is a combination of many number of data sets.”

Why does this matter? Because in states where the TFR is higher the youth of those states may not have the education or earning opportunities to deal with ageing family members, something that needs to be corrected.

Watch the entire discussion between Govindraj Ethiraj and Anuradha SenGupta, in the video above.