A chartered accountant pointed out the exorbitant property prices in urban India and explained its impact on socio-cultural behaviour. According to a financial professional, high property prices are a significant barrier for India’s middle class, making family planning a financial risk.
In a post on X, CA Nitin Kaushik pointed out the financial burden of housing costs even for those with high-paying jobs, saying: “High real estate prices are the biggest contraceptive in urban India today. India’s middle class is hitting a wall and it has nothing to do with thinking. It’s bad math.”
Highlighting the struggle of salaried individuals trying to manage housing EMI payments while juggling household expenses, he suggested that the current economic climate is forcing couples to prioritize financial stability over children. Terming property prices as contraceptives, he added, “When a couple in Gurugram earns ₹3L a month and I still feel poor, something in the system is fundamentally broken. We keep celebrating the demographic dividend but ignoring the massive real estate wall our generation is running into.”
Describing the financial burden of housing costs on individual households, he wrote: “If half your salary goes to EMIs for a small flat, a child ceases to be just a milestone in life, it becomes a financial risk that pushes your stability into the red.”
According to Nitin Kaushik, society has reached a point where space is a luxury and tuition feels like a prepaid service. The salary increase is marginal and does not keep pace with the sharp increase in school expenses. He further notes that people are not actively choosing to have fewer children, but fertility is falling because economic conditions make it expensive to raise children. Thus, couples weigh the opportunity costs of procreation against financial stability.
At the end of the post, he emphasized the reason for the delay in family planning: “People don’t choose to have fewer children, who give them a price by raising them. Most experts call it a social shift. It’s not. It’s an economic rejection of a lifestyle where you work 12 hours a day just to afford a commute and a matchbox to sleep in.” In essence, he argued that the sharp increase in the cost of housing and education is changing family planning in India.
Reaction on social networks
The user wrote: “Couples are starting to treat having children as an economic/financial decision due to the over inflation of education/housing costs etc rather than something that comes as a natural human decision (sic).”
Another user commented, “Education and medicine is a bigger factor than wealth.”
Delhi sees significant drop in birth rate
Over the years, Delhi has seen a significant decline in its Total Fertility Rate (TFR) which stood at 1.4 in 2020, well below the replacement level of 2.1. The nation’s capital witnessed the highest decline in the average number of children per woman, according to the Sample Registration System (SRS) report by the Registrar General of India for 2021. This rapid decline is due to urbanization, higher education, increased female labor force participation, high cost of living and delayed marriage.
