Demographic Features of India

Population is not merely a number to be counted — for an economy it is simultaneously the largest single resource and the largest single burden, depending on how it is educated, employed and kept healthy. This is exactly why the Andhra Pradesh Intermediate Economics syllabus places "Population and Human Resources Development" right after the chapter on growth and development: a country's people are the raw material of every other economic outcome.

India's basic demographic profile is drawn primarily from the decennial Census, the last full head-count being Census 2011 (India has not conducted its scheduled 2021 Census; 2011 therefore remains the last complete official enumeration and the standard reference point in Intermediate Economics answers).

A few structural features are worth understanding rather than just memorising:

• Uneven distribution. States such as Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar and West Bengal together hold a disproportionately large share of the population relative to their land area, while sparsely populated states like Arunachal Pradesh or Sikkim show the opposite pattern. Andhra Pradesh, for its own Intermediate students, sits in the middle of this range in density terms.
• Age structure. India has historically had — and, as of the 2011 count, still has — a relatively young population, with a large share below 35 years of age. This youthful structure is the raw material behind the idea of the "demographic dividend" discussed later in this chapter.
• Declining but still positive growth. The decadal growth rate has been falling steadily since the 1981-91 decade (23.9%) through 1991-2001 (21.5%) to 2001-2011 (17.7%), reflecting falling birth rates as development and family-planning outreach have spread — the trend is downward, even though the absolute population added each decade remains large because it grows on an ever-larger base.
• Rising but uneven literacy. Literacy rose from about 65% in 2001 to 74.04% in 2011, but a persistent gender gap (male 82.14% vs female 65.46% in 2011) remains a live policy concern.

The rate of population growth for any two Census years can be measured simply:

where $P_t$ is the population in the later year and $P_{t-1}$ is the population in the earlier year. This is a standard computation an AP Intermediate Economics student is expected to be able to carry out on given data, as illustrated in the numerical problems at the end of this chapter.