BPSC 71st CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 54 of 150

Correct — A, "1 and 2 are correct". All three statements come from Chapter 12 of the Bihar Economic Survey 2024-25, and two of them survive. Statement 1 is true, and the decline is not marginal: the Survey projects the 0-19 age band to fall from 49.4 per cent of Bihar's population in 2011 to 30.1 per cent in 2041, a loss of 19.3 percentage points, with Appendix Table A 12.4 on printed page 478 giving the decade steps as 43.50 per cent in 2021, 35.05 per cent in 2031 and 30.12 per cent in 2041. Statement 2 is true in the Survey's own words — Bihar's demographic dividend will peak around 2041, when the share of the working-age, that is 20 to 59 years, population is expected to hit 58.3 per cent from 43.2 per cent in 2011; the same appendix table tracks it at 48.86, 55.84 and 58.28 per cent across the three decades. Statement 3 is false, and this is the point at which a great deal of published commentary on this paper has the comparison the wrong way round. Bihar's 60-plus share is projected to rise from 7.4 per cent in 2011 to 11.6 per cent in 2041 — an increase of 4.2 percentage points. India's elderly share rises by 7.3 percentage points over the same window, which is 3.1 percentage points MORE than Bihar's, not less. The Commission made the same point in levels when it published its final revised key on 31 October 2025, citing page 478 and Table A 12.4 directly: Bihar's elderly population is expected to be 11.6 per cent in 2041 while India's will be about 16 per cent. Statement 3 therefore fails on either reading of "more sharply" — Bihar's increase is the smaller one and Bihar's 2041 level is the lower one. With statement 3 out, options (b) and (c) both fall, because each of them contains it, and only option (a) is left standing. One provenance point that must travel with these numbers: they are the Bihar Economic Survey's OWN projections, computed by the State because no official district-level projection existed, using annual population growth rates taken from the Economic Survey of India 2018-19. They are not Census figures, and they are not the National Commission on Population and Registrar General's Population Projections for India and States 2011-2036, which stop at 2036 and cannot produce a 2041 number at all.

• (b)1 and 3 are correct — The most attractive wrong answer on the item, because it pairs a genuinely true statement with the one the intuition wants to accept. Statement 1 is correct — the 0-19 share does fall from 49.4 per cent to 30.1 per cent. Statement 3 is not: Bihar's 60-plus share rises 4.2 percentage points, from 7.4 to 11.6 per cent, while India's rises 7.3 percentage points to roughly 16 per cent by 2041. A code is only correct if every statement inside it is correct, so one false member is fatal to the whole option.
• (c)2 and 3 are correct — Fails for the same single reason. Statement 2 is true — the Survey says in terms that Bihar's demographic dividend will peak around 2041, with the 20-59 band reaching 58.3 per cent against 43.2 per cent in 2011. But statement 3 is false, and carrying it into the code destroys the code. Notice that statement 3 appears in both (b) and (c): a candidate who tests that one statement first and finds it false has eliminated two of the three substantive options in a single step, without needing to verify statement 2 at all.
• (d)More than one of the above — Cannot be right on this item, and it is worth seeing why. The codes (a), (b) and (c) name mutually exclusive pairs, so more than one of them could be simultaneously correct only if all three underlying statements were true — the situation on Q53 of this same paper, where every statement held and the compound option was the answer. Here exactly two statements are true, which means precisely one code matches the facts. The option is a decoy for candidates who reach for it whenever they are unsure rather than because the arithmetic of the codes supports it.

Demographic transition theory describes the path every population takes as it modernises: death rates fall first, birth rates fall a generation later, and in the interval between the two the population grows quickly and then, crucially, changes shape. The gap produces a bulge that moves up the age pyramid — first as a very large cohort of children, then as a very large cohort of working-age adults, and finally as a very large cohort of the elderly. The middle phase is the demographic dividend: a window in which the share of people of working age is at its historical maximum and the dependency ratio, the number of dependants each hundred workers support, is at its minimum. The dividend is an opportunity, not a payment. It is realised only if the large working-age cohort is educated, healthy and actually employed, which is why policy attention attaches to skilling and job creation rather than to the demography itself. India as a whole entered this window in the 2000s and its national dividend is generally placed as peaking in the 2030s. Bihar is a decade or more behind, because its fertility decline started later — its total fertility rate was 3.00 in the National Family Health Survey 2019-21, the highest of any State against an all-India figure of 2.0. Late fertility decline has two consequences that this question turns on: Bihar's working-age share keeps climbing until about 2041, later than the national peak, and Bihar's population ages more slowly than India's, because it keeps replenishing its young cohorts while the national pyramid is already narrowing at the base.

Start by noticing that statements 1 and 2 are two faces of a single arithmetic and cannot easily be separated. Shares must sum to 100. If the 0-19 band collapses by 19.3 percentage points and the 60-plus band rises by only 4.2, the difference has to accumulate in the 20-59 band — which is exactly what a peaking demographic dividend means. So statements 1 and 2 stand or fall together, and both stand. That leaves statement 3 as the sole discriminator between the three substantive codes, and it is the one that appears in two of them, which makes the efficient tactic obvious: test statement 3 first. If it is false, (b) and (c) both die at once and (a) is the answer without any further work. The reason so many candidates and so many published solutions get statement 3 wrong is a plausible-sounding mental model — Bihar is India's youngest large State, its elderly base is tiny at 7.4 per cent, and a small base is usually assumed to grow fastest. The projections say the opposite, and for a sound reason: ageing is driven by the fertility decline of thirty years earlier, and Bihar's decline came late, so its cohorts of the 2040s are still being fed from below. The single discriminating fact to carry into the exam hall is therefore a pair of numbers, not a slogan: Bihar's 60-plus share rises 4.2 percentage points to 11.6 per cent by 2041, while India's rises 7.3 percentage points to about 16 per cent. India ages faster than Bihar, and by 2041 India is the older society of the two.

• Bihar Economic Survey 2024-25, Chapter 12, printed page 413: the 0-19 age band is projected to fall from 49.4 per cent of Bihar's population in 2011 to 30.1 per cent in 2041, a decline of 19.3 percentage points, with Appendix Table A 12.4 giving 43.50 per cent in 2021, 35.05 per cent in 2031 and 30.12 per cent in 2041.
• The Survey's own sentence on the dividend: Bihar's demographic dividend will peak around 2041, when the share of the working-age, i.e. 20-59 years, population is expected to hit 58.3 per cent from 43.2 per cent in 2011; Table A 12.4 tracks the band at 48.86, 55.84 and 58.28 per cent across 2021, 2031 and 2041.
• Bihar's 60-plus share rises from 7.4 per cent in 2011 to 11.6 per cent in 2041, a gain of 4.2 percentage points, against an increase of 7.3 percentage points for India — so India's elderly share rises 3.1 percentage points more than Bihar's, and the Commission's remark of 31 October 2025 puts India at about 16 per cent in 2041 against Bihar's 11.6 per cent.
• Provenance: these are the Bihar Economic Survey's own projections, produced because no official district-level projection existed, using annual population growth rates from the Economic Survey of India 2018-19 — Bihar's population 1,041 lakh in 2011 rising to 1,230 lakh in 2021, 1,395 lakh in 2031 and 1,534 lakh in 2041. They are not Census figures, and not the National Commission on Population and Registrar General's Population Projections for India and States 2011-2036, which stop at 2036.
• The demographic reason Bihar ages later: its total fertility rate was 3.00 in the National Family Health Survey 2019-21 — 3.19 rural and 2.25 urban — the highest of any State or Union Territory, against an all-India total fertility rate of about 2.0 and a replacement level of 2.1.

• Assuming a young State must be ageing fastest — Bihar's 60-plus share rises only 4.2 percentage points to 2041 against India's 7.3, because ageing is driven by a fertility decline that Bihar began late
• Attributing these projections to the Census or to the National Commission on Population — they are the Bihar Economic Survey's own, and the RGI/NCP series stops at 2036, so it cannot yield a 2041 figure
• Failing to notice that statement 3 sits inside two of the three codes, so testing that one statement first resolves the whole question in a single step
• Reaching for 'More than one of the above' out of uncertainty — with mutually exclusive codes it can only be right if every underlying statement is true

BPSC builds these from a single page of the State Economic Survey and then plants one statement whose direction is inverted, trusting the candidate's intuition about a young State to do the rest — so Bihar's demography must be revised as signed comparisons against the all-India figure, not as isolated percentages. UPSC asks the same concept without any State data at all: it will define the demographic dividend by its age band, or ask what India must do to realise it, testing whether the candidate understands that the dividend is a window of opportunity rather than an automatic gain.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  According to the Bihar Economic Survey 2024-25, Bihar's demographic dividend is expected to peak around which year, with the working-age (20-59 years) share reaching what level ?

  • (a)2031, with about 55.8 per cent
  • (b)2041, with about 58.3 per cent
  • (c)2051, with about 62.0 per cent
  • (d)2026, with about 50.0 per cent

  Answer(b) 2041, with about 58.3 per cent — the Survey states that Bihar's demographic dividend will peak around 2041, when the 20-59 share is expected to hit 58.3 per cent from 43.2 per cent in 2011. The 55.8 per cent figure in option (a) is the intermediate 2031 value from Appendix Table A 12.4, not the peak.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Bihar Economic Survey 2024-25 projects the share of Bihar's population aged 60 years and above to rise from 7.4 per cent in 2011 to what level in 2041 ?

  • (a)9.1 per cent
  • (b)11.6 per cent
  • (c)16.0 per cent
  • (d)20.4 per cent

  Answer(b) 11.6 per cent — a rise of 4.2 percentage points. Option (a) 9.1 per cent is the projected 2031 value, and option (c) 16 per cent is the figure for INDIA in 2041, which is the comparison that makes Bihar the slower-ageing of the two.