A bunch of vital stats from South Asia from Google Data Explorer. Since Zach and I started looking at these data since the early 2000s Pakistan and Bangladesh have diverged, unfortunately. I don’t understand what’s going on with Bangladesh’s anomalously high adolescent fertility though. This could be a function of variation among women as they age, with those entering the labor force delaying childbirth and the number of children so much that it brings the whole average down.
And of course, the whole comparison between India and the other countries is difficult since the Indian statistics average together many different regions.
Great work.
Any way you could possibly separate out the “India” figure for West India, North India, Central India, East India, Northeast India, and South India?
I believe there are state-based statistics for India, so it might just be a matter of clubbing together the right set of states and doing a weighted average.
Per-state: https://scroll.in/article/865569/indian-population-is-growing-much-faster-in-the-north-and-the-south-is-paying-the-price
TFR 1981:
UP: 5.8 (highest)
Kerala: 2.8 (lowest)
India: 4.5
Highest – Lowest = 3.0
Highest – India = 1.3
India – Lowest = 1.7
TFR 2016:
Bihar: 3.3 (highest)
West Bengal: 1.6 (lowest)
India: 2.2
Highest – Lowest = 1.7
Highest – India = 1.1
India – Lowest = 0.6
So the gap between the highest and lowest TFR states is shrinking, and the all India weighted average is moving towards the lower TFR states.
Most other indicators will show trends, so the disaggregation by states might not be as necessary as in the past.
Google: List of states and union territories of India by fertility rate
I’m particularly interested in seeing if East India and NE India are more like Bangladesh; if South India is more like Sri Lanka; and if North and West India are more like Pakistan. I suspect that to be true, but want to see how much so. It may be that India is more of a distinct thing of its own rather than an average of disparate regions.
This will help:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/7evnf9/fertility_rates_of_south_asia_1293_x_1199/
Religion plays a role as well, in UP for example Hindu fertility rate is 2.6 whereas Muslim is 3.1. In WB, Hindu is 1.64 and Muslim 2.08.
See here: http://rchiips.org/nfhs/NFHS-4Reports/WestBengal.pdf
But in general this tracks with region. Where Hindus have lower TFRs, Muslims have lower ones as well.
All in all, partition did not have any positive impact on development indicators for Muslims anywhere in South Asia.