Fertility and Quantity-Quality Trade off in a Poor State of India

Harihar Sahoo, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

The study is an attempt to focus on the decline in fertility in Odisha, one of the extremely undeveloped states of India. In spite of having widespread poverty, low level of industrialization and urbanization, agrarian economy the decline of fertility in Odisha, is quite impressive. Results based on the secondary data sources and a field investigation in one district of Odisha revealed that there is a clear change in value of children due to increasing aspirations of parents and the rise in the cost of living. There is a conscious emphasis on enhancing the quality of life across social and occupational class. This has lead to the classical quantity-quality trade off and lower family size desires. Overall cost of children has increased in relation to benefits. To meet the increased cost, strategy is to adopt a small family. For this adoption, means were provided by government sponsored family planning programme.