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Trends and Differentials in Parity Progression among Northern and Southern Women in India
Authors: K. K. Singh, and Shruti Verma
Source: Asian Journal of Research in Social Sciences and Humanities, 4(3): 42-56
Topic(s): Parity
Country: Asia
  India
Published: MAR 2014
Abstract: Parity progression ratio (PPR), i.e. the conditional probability of progression to the (i+1)th parity for the women of ith parity, is the most important measure of child limiting behavior of any population. PPR is recognized as a significant measure of fertility dynamics and family building process, but its estimation methods involve different complexities for different types of data. In the present paper a methodology has been proposed to estimate PPR’s considering PPR as a function of time. Utilizing the proposed methodology investigation of differentials in trends in PPR’s in northern and southern regions of India has been made among different parity cohorts of women using the data of National Family Health Survey -III. Northern and southern region show wide differentials in PPR among themselves and also clear differentials can be observed in PPR’s with respect to time within the same region. PPR’s are continuously decreasing from older to recent parity cohorts but in northern region decline is not as significant as that in southern region. It is observed that northern region is still very far from adoption of one or two child norm as compared to the southern region. Keywords: Parity progression ratio, parity cohort, fertile, sterile.