Demographic Transition in Asia and its Consequences

In India the internal differences are as pronounced as those between countries. The major southern states, i.e. Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, have been, and remain, perhaps two decades ahead in their experience of the demographic transition compared with the big, populous northern and eastern states, in particular, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh (UP). It is especially in the densely settled, landlocked, poor northern states of Bihar and UP that death rates and reproductive behaviour have been the slowest to change. Internal differences also exist in China, but they are less prominent and the basic division is between rural and urban areas rather than between groups of provinces.