Modernization, contraception and fertility change in India
Srinivasan, K.
International Family Planning Perspectives 14(3): 94-102
1988
ISSN/ISBN: 0190-3187 DOI: 10.2307/2947739Document Number: 350152
Indian fertility levels prior to the introduction of birth control were moderately high, yet below the levels of many developing countries. Despite early age at marriage and the universality of marriage in India, periods of sexual abstinence and other cultural practices are believed to have kept the level of natural fertility lower than in European societies and to have resulted in a fertility pattern in which Indian women completed childbearing relatively early. By weakening such practices as breastfeeding and sexual abstinence, modernization seems to have increased the levels of natural fertility: marital fertility rates rose between 1951-75, despite increases in contraceptive practice. An analysis of data from selected fertility studies, carried out in 1972 and 1984 in a number of predominantly rural Indian states, shows that while some states experienced declines in the general marital fertility rate of approximately 30%, the decline in others was less than 10%. In addition, total fertility rates in the states ranged widely, from 2.4 to 5.9 children per woman, in 1984. Data on selected social, economic and health service variables indicate that, although improvements occurred in all measures over the 12 year period, they were not spectacular. Of the variables considered, the adult female literacy rate was found to be most closely associated with the total fertility rate. Interstate differences in fertility rates were found to be closely tied to differences in the proportion of couples protected by modern methods of contraception, which ranged from 12% to 40% in 1984. .. By weakening such practices as breastfeeding and sexual abstinence, modernization seems to have increased the levels of natural fertility [in India]. Marital fertility rates rose between 1951 and 1975, despite increases in contraceptive practice and an increase since the beginning of the century in the age at marriage, from approximately 13 years to 18 years, among girls.