In fiscal year 2020, over ************ children in India were born through institutional deliveries, and a little over *** thousand were home births. The overall data shows a growing trend of institutional deliveries at hospitals or primary health centres, compared to ones at home. This indicated an improvement in India’s efforts at improving maternity care facilities.

Childbirth assistance

However, this does not guarantee proper care and attention to the millions of expectant mothers each year in this south-Asian country. In the first half of 2020, over *** thousand women in the state of Uttar Pradesh were reported to have given birth at home. Of these, only about ** thousand women delivered with the help of skilled birth attendants.

Decline in maternal mortality

In order to improve these metrics, the government has established the world’s largest network of grass root healthcare workers for pregnant women. This has helped reduce the maternal mortality rate by a considerable margin over the last two decades. From about *** pregnancy-related deaths for every 100,000 live births in 1995, the country’s maternal mortality ratio has gone down to *** in 2015.

The child mortality rate in India, for children under the age of five, was 509 deaths per thousand births in 1880. This means that over half of all children born in 1880 did not survive past the age of five, and it remained this way until the twentieth century. From 1900 until today, the child mortality rate has fallen from over 53 percent in 1900, to under four percent in 2020. Since 1900, there were only two times where the child mortality rate increased in India, which were as a result of the Spanish Flu pandemic in the 1910s, and in the 1950s as India adjusted to its newfound independence.

Sex Ratio at Birth: Female per 1000 Male: Uttar Pradesh data was reported at 905.000 NA in 2020. This records an increase from the previous number of 894.000 NA for 2019. Sex Ratio at Birth: Female per 1000 Male: Uttar Pradesh data is updated yearly, averaging 878.000 NA from Dec 2006 (Median) to 2020, with 15 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 905.000 NA in 2020 and a record low of 869.000 NA in 2014. Sex Ratio at Birth: Female per 1000 Male: Uttar Pradesh data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India. The data is categorized under India Premium Database’s Demographic – Table IN.GAJ001: Memo Items: Sex Ratio at Birth.

According to the 2021 Census, 81.7% of the population of England and Wales was white, 9.3% Asian, 4.0% black, 2.9% mixed and 2.1% from other ethnic groups.

Life expectancy in India was 25.4 in the year 1800, and over the course of the next 220 years, it has increased to almost 70. Between 1800 and 1920, life expectancy in India remained in the mid to low twenties, with the largest declines coming in the 1870s and 1910s; this was because of the Great Famine of 1876-1878, and the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918-1919, both of which were responsible for the deaths of up to six and seventeen million Indians respectively; as well as the presence of other endemic diseases in the region, such as smallpox. From 1920 onwards, India's life expectancy has consistently increased, but it is still below the global average.

By the early 1870s, the child mortality rate of the area of modern-day Bangladesh was estimated to be just over five hundred deaths per thousand live births, meaning that more than half of all infants born in these years would not survive past their fifth birthday. Child mortality would steadily climb towards the end of the 19th century, to a rate of almost 57 percent, as a series of famines would result in significant declines in access to nutrition and the increased displacement of the population. However, after peaking at just over 565 deaths per thousand births at the turn of the century, the British colonial administration partitioned the Bengal region (a large part of which lies in present-day India), which would begin to bring some bureaucratic stability to the region, improving healthcare and sanitation.

Child mortality would largely decline throughout the 20th century, with two temporary reversals in the late 1940s and early 1970s. The first of these can be attributed in part to disruptions in government services and mass displacement of the country’s population in the partitioning of India and Pakistan following their independence from the British Empire; during which time, present-day Bangladesh became East Pakistan. The second reversal would occur in the early 1970s, as a side effect for the Bangladesh Liberation War, the famine of 1974, and the subsequent transition to independence. Outside of these reversals, child mortality would decline significantly in the 20th century, and by the turn of the century, child mortality in Bangladesh would fall below one hundred deaths per thousand births; less than a fifth of the rate at the beginning of the century. In the past two decades, Bangladesh's child mortality has continued its decline to roughly a third of this rate, due to improvements in healthcare access and quality in the country; in 2020, it was estimated that for every thousand children born in Bangladesh, almost 97 percent will survive past the age of five years.

Over 909 million people in India lived in rural areas in 2023, a decrease from 2022. Urban India, although far behind with over 508 million people, had a higher year-on-year growth rate during the measured period.