Is Recent Fertility Decline in India Poverty Induced?

Chander Shekhar, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)
Namrata Mondal, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

A few analyses show that non-literate women are the real drivers of fertility decline in the recent past, supporting the diffusion theory of fertility decline in the Indian context. However, these analyses do not distinguish recent fertility declines (1989-2006) deriving from the poor and non-poor strata of non-literate women. To resolve this issue, we estimate the total fertility rate and three major proximate determinants of fertility using NFHS data, 1992-93 and 2005-06, for poor (wealth quintiles 1&2) and non-poor (wealth quintiles 3+) women in 4 educational attainment groups. We find larger fertility declines among non-literate women in the non-poor than in the poor quintiles. This paper reveals that the non-poor women were more likely to postpone marriage and use contraception during the inter-survey period, which acted to inhibit fertility. Also, the fertility-inhibiting effect of contraception is larger for primary-educated women in the non-poor than the poor category.