Regional Fertility Differences in India

Abstract

While theoretical literature distinguishes between factors that affect individual preferences regarding fertility and their ability to achieve these preferences, empirical literature often tends to conflate the two by focusing on completed family size. This chapter uses unique longitudinal data for India to distinguish between factors that affect fertility preferences, and those that affect ability to implement these preferences. India, with its tremendous regional heterogeneity in socioeconomic conditions as well as service delivery systems, offers a unique laboratory for this analysis. The results show that while socioeconomic characteristics of individuals account for substantial proportion of regional differences in fertility preferences, they only account for a small proportion of regional differences in unintended births. This suggests that unobserved factors, potentially those associated with regional health systems, have a far greater role in explaining underlying differences in unintended births than in explaining fertility preferences.