Match the following concepts (List-I) with their appropriate description (List-II) :
| List-I (Concepts) | List-II (Definition) | ||
| (A) | Fertility Rate | (I) | Number of live births per 1000 women in the child bearing age group |
| (B) | Total Fertility Rate | (II) | Total number of live births that a hypothetical woman would have during her entire reproductive years |
| (C) | Infant Mortality Rate | (III) | Total number of women who die in childbirth per 1000 live births |
| (D) | Maternal Mortality Rate | (IV) | Number of deaths of babies before the age of one year per 1000 live births |
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → (A) - (I), (B) - (II), (C) - (IV), (D) - (III)
(A) Fertility Rate — this matches (I) Number of live births per 1000 women in the child bearing age group. The child-bearing age group is usually taken to be 15 to 49 years. Like the birth rate, it is a rough average for the whole population.
(B) Total Fertility Rate — this matches (II) Total number of live births that a hypothetical woman would have during her entire reproductive years. It is the average number of children a woman would have over her life: a TFR of 1.7 means that the average woman produces 1.7 children, below the replacement level.
(C) Infant Mortality Rate — this matches (IV) Number of deaths of babies before the age of one year per 1000 live births. A high infant mortality rate is an unambiguous indicator of backwardness and poverty.
(D) Maternal Mortality Rate — this matches (III) Total number of women who die in childbirth per 1000 live births. It counts women who die in childbirth, and like the infant mortality rate it falls sharply as medical facilities and education improve.
Note 1: There seems to be a mistake in the original NTA paper, which prints item (III), the maternal mortality rate, as women who die in childbirth ‘per 1000 live births’, when it should read ‘per 1,00,000 live births’, as every NCERT edition gives it. The match is not affected, since (III) is the only item about women who die in childbirth.
Note 2: The full definition of the total fertility rate, the live births that a hypothetical woman would have over the reproductive age group, was there in the chapter ‘The Demographic Structure of the Indian Society’ of the pre-rationalised NCERT. These lines were cut in the 2023-24 NCERT, which NTA followed in 2024, and are not in the NCERT book (2025-26), which uses the term only with its example of 1.7 children per woman; the chapter is still there.
NCERT (2025-26): “2.1 Some Theories and Concepts in Demography … The fertility rate refers to the number of live births per 1000 women in the child-bearing age group, usually taken to be 15 to 49 years. But like the other rates discussed on the previous page (the birth and death rates) this is a ‘crude’ rate – it is a rough average for an entire population and does not take into account the differences across agegroups. Differences across age groups can sometimes be very significant in affecting the meaning of indicators. That is why demographers also calculate age-specific rates.” “The infant mortality rate is the number of deaths of babies before the age of one year per 1000 live births. Likewise, the maternal mortality rate is the number of women who die in childbirth per 1,00,000 live births. High rates of infant and maternal mortality are an unambiguous indicator of backwardness and poverty; development is accompanied by sharp falls in these rates as medical facilities and levels of education, awareness and prosperity increase.…” “…Some states, like Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal have managed to bring down their total fertility rates (TFR) to 1.7 each (2016). This means that the average woman in these states produces only 1.7 children, which is below the ‘replacement level’ and Kerala’s TFR is also below the replacement level, which means that the population is going to decline in future.…” NCERT (Pre-rationalised): “…The total fertility rate refers to the total number of live births that a hypothetical woman would have if she lived through the reproductive age group and had the average number of babies in each segment of this age group as determined by the age-specific fertility rates for that area.…” |