Abstract: This study examines the relationship between women’s education, household decision-making autonomy, female employment, and total fertility rate (TFR) across 31 Indian states and union territories using secondary data from the National Family Health Survey 5 (NFHS-5, 2019–21). Employing Pearson’s correlation analysis and both simple and multiple ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, the study tests three hypotheses: that women’s education, decision-making autonomy, and employment are each negatively associated with TFR. The findings reveal that women’s decision-making autonomy is the strongest and most consistent predictor of TFR (r = −0.658, p < .001; β = −0.658 in simple regression; β = −0.839, p = .001 in the full model), followed by women’s education (r = −0.546, p = .001), which loses significance in the multiple regression due to high collinearity with decision-making (r = 0.828). Female employment, contrary to expectation, shows no significant bivariate association with TFR (r = 0.117, p = .529) but becomes a positive predictor in the full model (β = +0.401, p = .006). The full model explains 57.3% of variance in state-level TFR (R² = 0.573, Adjusted R² = 0.525, F(3,27) = 12.07, p < .001). The study contributes macro-level evidence from India to the literature on female empowerment and demographic transition, and argues that women’s autonomy, not education or employment alone, is the proximate mechanism through which human capital shapes fertility behaviour.