Contextual effects of neighbour on contraceptive use in high fertility state of India

Lucky Singh, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

There is no denying that persistently high fertility in Uttar Pradesh, of 3.8 children per woman (NFHS-3, 2005-06), is a consequence of low contraceptive prevalence. With a view to promote intervention strategies which can penetrate socio-cultural hurdles to contraception, this paper seeks to explore contextual neighborhood factors which are either cushion or barrier to contraception. More specifically this paper proposed to test two hypotheses, first women in rich neighborhood have higher chances of contraceptive use and secondly, women in the neighborhood of predominantly non-aligned castes are less likely to use contraceptive. By using multilevel analysis result shows that women in affluent neighborhood are benefited to enhance contraceptive use by way of sharing of knowledge and diffusion of contraceptive behavior, while the presence of higher proportion of non-aligned castes act more as demoting factor, possibly because of limited interaction and sharing of knowledge among socio-culturally diverse members in the same neighborhood.