Spatio-Temporal Dimensions of Fertility in India: A Perspective on Rural-Urban Disparity

Abstract

Fertility is continuously declining in India. Therefore, over the past few years, there has been an increasing interest among researchers as well as Indian policy-makers in the fertility decline in India. But the studies having their focus on the rural-urban disparity in fertility are only a few to count.

The present study has endeavoured, therefore, to explain the spatio-temporal dimensions of fertility and patterns of rural-urban disparity in fertility in India. Data for the present analysis have been drawn mainly from the Sample Registration System (SRS) which is being maintained by the Registrar General of India. The crude birth rate, which is the most common index of fertility, has been adopted for the analysis of spatio-temporal dimensions of fertility and patterns of rural-urban disparity in fertility in India. The absolute differential in the crude birth rate of rural-urban residence has been calculated by simply subtracting the urban CBR from the rural CBR. However, the relative differential, also known as disparity ratio, has been found by working out the ratio between the two rates, e.g. Rural:Urban, i.e. 30.9 : 24.3 = 1.27: 1. Though, these are two different views of disparity from different angles, but both suffer from a common vagary of grouping dissimilar areas into the same type.

Hence, a more sophisticated technique is required to measure the disparity between two segments. Therefore, disparityindices for crude birth rates were computed on the basis of  Sopher's Disparity Index (1974), as modified by Kundu and Rao (1982).

During the period of four decades between 1971 and2007, the crude birth rate for India declined gradually from 36.9 live births per thousand in 1971 to 23.1 live births per thousand population in 2007. The declining trend in crude birth rates was also observed both in rural (38.9 in 1971 to 24.7 in 2007) and urban (30.1 in 1971 to 18.6 in 2007) areas. The intensification of the family planning programmes; increase in literacy rate, rise in age at marriage, the high female participation rate in the non-agricultural activities, and reduction in marital fertility specially at the advanced ages due to the acceptance of family planning measures (mostly of sterilization) seem to be among the factors underlying the recent decline in fertility in India.

The resulting rural-urban differential in birth rates with certain ups and downs also registered a declining trend from 8.8 per thousand in 1971 to 6.1 per thousand in 2007. This is because of increasing awareness among rural masses about social values and adoption of various birth control measures.

In regional perspective, the rural-urban differentials in crude birth rates in India reveal that the CBR is declining continuously over the period of time in all the states and union territories. In 1971, the maximum rural-urban differential in CBR was observed in the state of West Bengal (17.0 per 1000) and followed by north-eastern states of Meghalaya (15.5 per 1000), Tripura (14.1 per 1000), Arunachal Pradesh (12.7 per 1000) and north-western states of Himachal Pradesh (14.3 per 1000), Haryana (11.8 per 1000), and Jammu & Kashmir (11.7 per 1000). On the other hand, the minimum rural-urban differential in CBR was noticed in the southern states of Orissa (1.7 per 1000) and Kerala  (1.7 per 1000) where birth rates are high in both rural and urban areas.