Fertility and family planning among social groups in India

Dewaram A. Nagdeve, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)
Laxmi Prasad Sonwani, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

The present paper is an attempt to study fertility and family planning among social groups in India. The data has been analyzed from District Level Household Survey - Reproductive and Child Health ((DLHS-RCH) conducted during 2002-04 in India. The DLHS-RCH collected data from 507622 currently married women in the age group 15 to 44 years. The bi-variate and multivariate regression analysis has been used to observe the association. It is revealed from analysis that scheduled castes and scheduled tribes are having higher fertility and lower use of family planning as compared to other backward castes and others. The mean children ever born vary significantly with respect to socio-economic characteristics among scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, other backward castes and others. The difference in MCEB and MCS declines with mother's education. Female sterilization is found to be mostly known and use method followed by condom, pill and male sterilization.