Population Growth and Urbanization in Bihar: A District Level Analysis

Population growth of any region is a crucial factor in the growth of urbanization, because degree of urbanization is typically expressed as the percentage of population residing in urban area. India as a country has witnessed steady growth in urbanization since 1961 to 2011, but the population growth rate continuously kept on fluctuating from 21.51 percent in 1961 to 24.80 percent in 1971, 24.66 percent in 1981, 23.87 percent in 1991 and it dipped to 21.54 percent in 2001 and finally reached 17.70 percent in 2011, registered a decrease of 3.81percentage point over five decades. Looking at trend of urbanization and population growth rate we find there has been a continuous increase in the population growth rate since 1961 to 2001, except the census year 1991, and census year 2011, recordeda growth rate of 25.42 percent which registered a decline of 3.2 percentage point from the previous decade 2001. This research paper tries to analyse the spatio - temporal variation of population growth and urbanization at district level (2001 and 2011) as well as trends of urbanization and population growth since 1961 to 2011 in India and the state of Bihar. This research paper also tried to find out the correlation between population growth rate and rate of urbanization, as well as between the trend of population growth and urbanization since 1961 to 2011, by means of Karl Pearson?s method of coefficient of correlation and their level of significance have been tested at 95% level of confidence.