Muslim growth: Facts, factors, myths

MUMBAI: Does religion play a role in fertility? The controversy over the Muslim rate of growth in the country has only recently erupted into the public domain, but demographers have been debating the ''religion factor'' for years.
Partly in response to rising Hindutva rhetoric on the bogey of the Islamic demographic bomb, an increasing number of studies in the last few years has been picking up one question: Why is the Muslim fertility consistently higher than that of any other community?
Times News Network outlines the debate:
THE NUMBERS GAME: The National Family Health Survey 1998-''99 shows that the fertility rate (or the average number of children a woman is likely to have) of Hindu women was 2.8 and Muslims 3.6.Incidentally, the ideal is considered to be 2.1, known as the replacement rate.
CLASS AND CASTE: Most experts accept that regional and socio-economic factors like poverty and access to healthcare largely determine fertility. The concentration of Muslims is in northern, backward states likeBihar and UP,where fertility is higher anyway.
Muslim womenin rural Tamil Nadu, for example, have lower fertility rates than their Hindu counterparts in Bihar and UP. "The key factor is economic," says Faujdar Ram, head, fertility studies, International Institute of Population Studies.
He notes that the gap in the fertility rates of poor and rich, illiterate and educated is as great as that between Hindu and Muslim.
Some studies have also shown that Muslims are more urbanised—which is associated with better access to health care—but they tend to occupy poorer city areas with lower levels of infrastructure, and have lower-paid jobs.
Their literacy and education levels too are among the lowest, especially among women.