A chartered accountant has pointed to exorbitant property prices in urban India and explained their impact on socio-cultural behaviour. According to the finance professional, high property prices are a significant barrier for the Indian middle class, making family planning a financial risk.
Pointing to the financial burden of housing costs even for those in high-paying jobs, CA Nitin Kaushik, in a post on X, said, “High property prices are the biggest contraceptive in urban India today. The Indian middle class is hitting a wall and it has nothing to do with mindset. It’s bad math.”
Highlighting the struggle of salaried individuals who try to manage EMI payments for housing while juggling household expenses, he suggested that the current economic situation is forcing couples to prioritise financial stability over having children. Labelling property prices as contraceptive, Kaushik observed, “When a couple in Gurugram earns ₹3L a month and still feels poor, something in the system is fundamentally broken. We keep celebrating the demographic dividend, but ignore the massive real estate wall our generation is crashing into.”
Describing the financial burden of housing costs on individual households, he wrote, “If half your salary goes toward an EMI for a tiny apartment, a child stops being just a life milestone it becomes a financial risk that pushes your stability into the red.”
According to Kaushik, the society has reached a point where space is luxury and school fee feels like a subscription service. Increases in salary are marginal and do not keep up with the steep rise in school expenses. He further notes that people are not actively deciding to have fewer kids; the fertility rate is coming down because the economic conditions are making it expensive to raise children. So, couples are weighing the opportunity cost of procreating with financial stability.
Concluding the post, he emphasised the reason for delays in family planning: “People aren’t choosing to have fewer kids, they’re being priced out of raising them. Most experts call this 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 steep rise in housing and education costs is reshaping family planning in India.
Social media reaction
A user wrote, “Couples have starting treating children as a Economic/Financial Decision due to excessive cost inflation in education/ housing etc than something which something which comes as a nautral human decision (sic).”
Another user remarked, “It is education and medical big factor than property.”
Delhi sees significant drop in fertility rate
Over the years, Delhi saw a significant drop in Total Fertility Rate (TFR), reaching 1.4 in 2020, well below the replacement level of 2.1. The national 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 driven by urbanisation, higher education, increased female workforce participation, high living costs and delayed marriage.
