Reproductive Behavior in Households of Rural Gujarat.

The degree to which people are influenced in their behavior and outlook by more macro community level factors such as caste and village-and thus the role which these communities play in helping to increase family planning acceptance and reduce fertility rates needs to be taken into consideration.

Abstract

This book is based on a household survey directed by the authors in 1970-1971 in 11 Gujarat villages. Approximately 470 married couples were interviewed 4 times making a total of about 1800 interviews. In addition to detailed household level data--including demographic economic social labor force education information--information was also collected on the sample villages themselves. Recent emphasis on community level approaches to development and health planning have not had a commensurate impact on efforts to encourage family planning and reduce fertility rates. Family planning programs after originally concentrating on making contraceptives freely available (on the assumption that couples wanted fewer children) are now concentrating on motivating individuals to use contraceptives by encouraging them to perceive the social and personal costs associated with having many children. However the degree to which people are influenced in their behavior and outlook by more macro community level factors such as caste and village-and thus the role which these communities play in helping to increase family planning acceptance and reduce fertility rates needs to be taken into consideration. The multivariate statistical technique of multiple classification analysis is used in analyzing data from a multipurpose multiround household survey. This analysis is repeated for 2 separate cast groups and several dependent variables in explaining how many children couples want how many children couples have and whether or not couples use family planning.