The pace at which India's population is growing is slowing, but not as rapidly as expected; India will become the largest country in the world sooner than earlier forecast. Literacy rates have increased sharply between 2001 and 2011; some of the low performing rates have shown strong improvements, the others have not. The dismal picture in the 2011 Census is that even as the overall sex ratio has improved due to better adult female mortality, that of the child sex ratio has further deteriorated. High mortality among girl children and sex selective abortions have pushed the child sex ratio down in all but three states.