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NEW DELHI: "Hum do, hamare do" seems to finally be coming true. An analysis of recently released census data reveals that the median household size in urban India is now less than four for the first time in history.
 
Data on houses and households released by the Census office shows that 56% of households in urban India now have four or less members. This is a marked change from 10 years ago, when the median household size in urban India was between four and five members.
 
With 49.7% of all Indian households having four or less members, the median Indian household has just a fraction over four members. In rural India, the median household size is between four and five members, but closer to four than it has ever been. As many as 47.1% of rural households now have four or less members, compared to less than 40% of rural households ten years ago.
 
The new batch of Census 2011 data showed that India now has 24.7 crore households. The data also lists households by size, and tells us what proportion of Indian households has one, two or three members and so on.
 
The census office has not released the average household size because the provisional population total and the number of households were counted at different points in time, registrar general C Chandramouli said. What we can do is determine the median household size, meaning the household size of 50% of the population.
 
Nine states and union territories have a median household size of four or less members, including Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Maharashtra, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. UP is the only Indian state with a median household size above five.
 
While ’household size’ is the number of people living together in one house and so is not the same as ’family size’, demographers say that in India the declining household size is being driven by falling family size.
 
This trend is not surprising, says demographer and fertility expert P Arokiasamy, professor in the department of development studies at the Mumbai-based International Institute for Population Sciences. "As the demographic transition progresses and fertility declines, household sizes will decline," Arokiasamy said. Census data released last year showed that the four southern states had already achieved a fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman, recognised as the "replacement rate".
 
"In addition, we are seeing a rise in the number of nuclear families compared with multi-generational families," Arokiasamy said. Nuclear families are the overwhelming norm in India, with 70% of households having just one married couple.
 
Large families however remain a significant but not dominant component of Indian life. Close to 20% of households have five members, and another 25% have six to eight members, while 6.6% have nine or more members. In Uttar Pradesh, more than half the households have six or more members.