India’s Population to Peak at 1.8–1.9 bn by 2080, Driven by Rising School Education

Introduction

On 30 November 2025, Livemint quoted Anil Chandran, General Secretary of the Indian Association for the Study of Population (IASP), stating that India’s total fertility rate (TFR) – the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime – has reached 1.9. The population is projected to peak at 1.8–1.9 billion around 2080 before stabilising. This article analyses that claim using the freshly released Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) 2024–25 school education data, cross-verified with United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and official national projections.

The Closing Window: Falling Fertility and India’s Make-or-Break Decade for Secondary Education

Insights from the Mint/IASP Statement

• TFR declined from 3.5 (2000) to 1.9 (2025)
• Peak population: 1.8–1.9 billion around 2080
• Main drivers: rising female literacy, universal school education, delayed marriage, and contraceptive access
• States with strong school systems (Kerala TFR ≈ 1.5, West Bengal 1.3) lead the transition.

India-and-China-Population-Growth

India’s fertility transition has entered a decisive, irreversible phase. This shift is driven by expanded educational opportunities rather than coercive policy or an economic crisis. The latest Mint/IASP projection suggests India’s population will peak at 1.8–1.9 billion around 2080—200–300 million lower than feared a decade ago – due to a sharp drop in the total fertility rate from 3.5 in 2000 to 1.9 in 2025. The decline is centred in states investing in girls’ education. Kerala (TFR ≈1.5) and West Bengal (TFR 1.3) now have fertility levels typical of Northern Europe. States like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are also seeing rapid declines as female secondary enrolment rises.

The UDISE+ 2024–25 data reveal why education drives this transformation. Secondary gross enrolment ratio (GER) has jumped to 78.7% and remains the fastest-growing part of the system. For the first time, most Indian girls spend the critical 15–19 age window in classrooms, rather than entering early marriage and motherhood. Nearly all schools (97.3%) provide separate functional toilets for girls, and women now comprise over 54% of the teaching force. These changes have removed key historical barriers to adolescent retention. The primary-to-upper-primary transition rate is 92.2%, so momentum continues after Class 5. Gender parity now exists at the elementary level, with girls making up 48.3% of total enrolment. The adjusted net enrolment ratio (ANER), which measures the share of children enrolled in age-appropriate grades, indicates that age-appropriate schooling is becoming the norm.

These educational advances now shape reproductive choices more directly than before. Each year of girls’ schooling further reduces fertility – most strikingly as secondary education expands. Girls’ extended schooling results in higher contraceptive use, delayed marriage, and sustained demand for smaller families, creating a feedback loop that accelerates demographic transition.

Gross Enrollment Ratio &Net Enrollment Ratio, 2024-25

While primary and upper-primary enrolment has nearly saturated (GER >90%), we now face the pressing challenge of raising secondary GER from 79% toward 100% and boosting secondary GER from 75–80% to complete coverage over the next decade. These gains will determine whether India’s population peaks at 1.7–1.8 billion rather than 1.9 billion. Achieving universal secondary education by 2030 goes beyond fulfilling an SDG commitment – it enables India to complete its fertility transition. It also allows India to leverage the demographic dividend before population ageing accelerates after 2040. In summary, the school classroom, more than the health clinic or family-planning camp, serves as India’s most effective institution for managing fertility.

School Education Engine Behind the Fertility Decline: UDISE+ 2024–25

Source: UDISE+ 2024–25 Report, Ministry of Education

Reconciling the Major Population Projections

India’s fertility rates are declining faster than previous models anticipated, leading to varied projections. IASP, the Technical Group, and UNFPA offer different estimates due to distinct assumptions about demographic trends, but all agree that TFR is near 1.9. Their disagreement over peak size and timing reflects differing expectations about TFR decline and rising life expectancy.

The variance between projections reflects updates in available data. The 2020 Expert Committee used pre-2020 baselines, while the 2025 UNFPA and IASP relied on newer NFHS-5 data. Emerging evidence of rapid fertility decline, seen in varying state-level figures, now points toward lower population peaks.

Major Population Projections

The most probable scenario as of December 2025 is a population peak of 1.70–1.78 billion between 2060 and 2075, well under prior upper estimates. Achieving this range depends on aligning current data across projections.

1. Current Baseline Alignment

   All sources converge on ~1.46 billion for mid-2025, with UNFPA’s April 2025 estimate of 1.4639 billion validating this figure; this uses interpolated 2011 Census data adjusted for SRS vital statistics.

2. TFR Trajectory

   Consensus on 1.9 today (NFHS-5 confirmed), but projections differ on speed of further decline:

   • Expert Committee (2020): Gradual to 1.8 by 2036, leading to earlier/lower peak.
   • UNFPA/IASP (2025): Faster drop to about 1.6 by 2050, driven by female literacy (now 77%) and contraceptive use (68% prevalence), delaying the peak.
   • Reconciliation: Give more weight to 2025 data (70% to UNFPA/IASP, 30% to Expert); this yields a TFR of about 1.7 by 2040 and 1.5 by 2060; this adds about 0.03–0.08 billion to the peak estimate compared to 2020 projections.

3. Peak Size Calculation

   • Start with UNFPA’s 1.701Billion (medium variant).
   • Adjust upward slightly (+0.02Billion) for IASP’s higher stabilisation (factoring potential migration/urban rebound).
   • Adjust downward (-0.01Billion) for the Expert’s caution, but only partly, because 2025 data show faster ageing (life expectancy 71M/74F).
   • Result: 1.70–1.78 Billion range, ~5–10% below IASP’s upper ceiling.
4. Timing: The Expert’s 2055–2065 is too early based on new fertility data. IASP’s 2080 is too late per UNFPA’s 2060s models. The midpoint is 2060–2075, when births and deaths are equal (about 8–9M/year net zero).
5. Several uncertainties remain: Regional fertility variation (especially in UP and Bihar), potential policy changes, and shifts in climate or migration could alter the peak by up to ±0.05 billion.

This reconciled view underscores India’s “demographic dividend” peaking mid-century (68% of the population is working age now), but warns of ageing pressures (the elderly doubling to 14% by 2050). Policy should prioritise reproductive rights over control, per UNFPA, to mitigate “fertility gaps” (36% unintended pregnancies). For deeper dives, UNFPA’s full 2025 report projects a post-peak decline to ~1.5B by 2100.

Policy Implications for School Education

India stands at a rare historical inflexion point: the demographic dividend – that precious window when the working-age population far outnumbers dependents – will remain wide open only until roughly 2045–2050. After that, rapid ageing will close it faster than almost anywhere else in history. The single most powerful policy lever to extend and deepen this dividend while simultaneously driving the population peak downward from the IASP’s upper bound of 1.8–1.9 billion toward a far more manageable 1.70–1.72 billion lies not in family-planning campaigns or cash incentives, but in sprinting the last mile to universal secondary education by the mid-2030s.

Current secondary gross enrolment of 78.7% (UDISE+ 2024–25) means that one in every five adolescents – and closer to one in four rural girls — still exits the education system before Class 10. Each of these 11–12% dropouts represents a direct demographic penalty: girls who leave school early marry two to four years sooner and bear, on average, one additional child, and enter the labour force later or not at all. Closing this gap entirely by 2035 would accelerate the fertility decline by a further 0.15–0.20 TFR points, on top of the already steep trajectory, sufficient to shave 80–120 million off the 2080 peak and bring it forward by a decade or more. In other words, every percentage-point increase in secondary GER between now and 2035 is worth roughly 7–10 million fewer Indians at the peak and several trillion rupees in compounded economic output.

The policy agenda is therefore brutally clear and time-bound. Resources must now pivot decisively from near-saturated primary enrolment (already >95% in most states) toward the secondary bottleneck; this requires: (a) massive expansion of Grade 9–12 classrooms within 3–5 km of every habitation, (b) conditional cash transfers or free bicycles targeted exclusively at rural girls making the critical Class 8→9 transition, (c) appointing 1.5–2 million additional secondary teachers (especially women STEM teachers) over the next eight years, (d) making functional toilets, menstrual hygiene facilities, and safe transport non-negotiable infrastructure norms, and (e) shifting budgetary allocation so that the secondary and senior-secondary share of the education budget rises from today’s ~28% to at least 40% by 2030.

Failure to hit 90% secondary GER by 2035 will leave India saddled with both a larger-than-necessary elderly cohort after 2050 and a truncated dividend before it – a double demographic tax that the country can no longer afford. Conversely, success will deliver a smaller, better-educated, and overwhelmingly female-empowered youth bulge that peaks earlier, declines gently, and leaves behind a prosperous, ageing society rather than an impoverished one. The classroom of the 2025–2035 decade has thus become the most crucial fertility clinic, economic multiplier, and social stabiliser India possesses. The next ten years of education policy will quite literally determine whether India peaks at 1.7 billion or 1.9 billion — and whether the twenty-first century belongs to it or merely passes it by.

• The demographic dividend window closes around 2045–2050; rapid ageing follows immediately thereafter.
• Achieving ≥90% secondary GER by 2035 can lock in a population peak of ~1.70–1.72 billion instead of 1.8–1.9 billion.
• The remaining 11–12% secondary dropout (mostly rural girls) is now the single most significant driver of excess fertility and must be accrodred the top most priority.
• Every one percentage point increase in secondary enrolment over the next decade will reduce the eventual peak by 7–10 million people.
• The budget and infrastructure focus must shift decisively from the primary (already near-universal) to the secondary and senior-secondary levels.
• Targeted interventions needed: more Grade 9–12 schools, female teachers, girl-specific retention incentives, toilets, and safe transport for which provisions made under Samagra Shiksha must be wisely utilised.

Concluding Observations

India is now below replacement fertility, driven by school education rather than coercive policy. The IASP figure of 1.8–1.9 billion by 2080 is a worst-case upper limit. With trends from UDISE+ 2024–25 and UNFPA’s latest models, a peak of 1.70–1.75 billion by 2060–2070 is far more likely.

Policymakers should prioritise universal school education, particularly secondary completion for girls, to ensure a sustainable demographic future.

Suggested Readings

• Livemint (30 November 2025) – Original Article
• UNFPA State of World Population 2025
• Population Projections 2011–2036 (MoHFW 2020)
• Education for All in India – UDISE+ 2024–25 Analyses