Reproduction, fertility, and population are topics that are of never-ending controversy across the globe, and big enough in India to be part of political fights - the debate over delimitation being the latest example.

Meanwhile, a recent world bank article indicates that national monetary policies could be a major factor influencing one of society's most fundamental choices: whether and when to have children. Across both advanced and emerging economies, fertility rates have fallen to historic lows - India one among them. India's fertility rate has been 2.0 as of 2024, while the world's total fertility rate has declined from 4.7 children per woman in 1960 to just 2.2 in 2023.

The report argues that while governments are increasingly trying to address falling birth rates through incentives, most often these efforts clash with a world where mortgage costs, food prices and EMIs eat away disposable income, all the while job security weakens.

This connection between money and fertility is becoming increasingly visible across emerging economies.

In Brazil, the World Bank notes that targeted access to affordable mortgages increased births among recipients, even though the country's overall fertility rate continued to decline during the 2010s. In China, easing borrowing constraints helped raise fertility, while rising housing prices and expanded financial investment opportunities suppressed it. Research from Korea found that subsidised loans and housing support were positively linked to intentions to have children among young adults. In Türkiye, fertility fell during periods of unemployment and economic stress.

While the World Bank's approach is global and conceptual, India-specific data from the NSO survey, released by the Press Information Bureau, provides insight into the financial realities households face. The survey shows that average out-of-pocket expenditure for childbirth in government hospitals is at 2,299, while private hospitals will cost you 37,630.

"The rising cost of living means you need significant financial stability just to live comfortably with children. You need active support systems through family or paid childcare. You need enough accumulated career capital to take parental leave without it being career suicide," writes Eugene Healey, a brand strategist who decodes cultural status symbols and patterns.

Reproductive Right vs Reproductive Justice

Low birthrates have been blamed on everything from increased formal employment among women, feminism to the new generation's selfishness. But at least for a good number of women, motherhood is not merely a personal decision. It is also closely tied to whether housing feels affordable, whether incomes feel stable and whether the future feels financially secure enough to take a career break to have a child.

In the light of abortion bans, this is where the pivotal distinction comes about reproductive rights and reproductive justice: While reproductive rights majorly concerns legal rights and freedoms relating to reproduction and reproductive health, reproductive justice goes beyond the pro-choice/pro-life debate. Reproductive justice is "the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities," according to SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, the first organization founded to build a reproductive justice movement.

"The increasing precarity in all aspects of life- economic, political, environmental-will affect reproductive decision making directly and indirectly. We see urban youth going childless citing climate change as a reason. At the same time there are many women, not as visible, who restrict the number of children and even rely on abortion for it, because they don't have the material conditions to do it. This maybe a farmer who lost her crop to climate change, a mother from a conflict zone, a labourer whose life is valued based on how much time she can show up for work. Theirs is not a "choice" as much as it is an injustice," says Angela Sebastian, a researcher focused on environmental and reproductive justice.