Approaches explaining regional differences in fertility decline in India

Abstract

Using adjustment as well as diffusion analysis, this paper first sets out to discuss, against a background of empirical investigations, two views which tend to be presented as opposites. Each perspective serves to interpret the substantial explanatory force attributed to the education of women for causing the decline in fertility in India at meso- and at micro-level. The hypotheses of adjustment and innovation diffusion do not exclude one another, but complement each other in their statements on regional deviations in fertility decline. At meso-level it is possible to establish a spatial pattern, which points to a diffusion process in the decline of fertility with three components: from towns to rural areas; from higher to lower classes of the social hierarchy in the urban system; and from southern to northern India. This distribution can, however, also be interpreted as adjustment to changed socio-economic conditions, since corresponding change sets in first in large towns and in southern India, due to the traditionally prevailing outward orientation of the population. Findings at the individual level indicate that networks, the linkages of which differ in their vertical and horizontal intensity (Hindu - Muslims, high - low incomes, market town - village) steer the diffusion of social and economic change, and that this change initiates the decline in fertility in adjustment to new perceptions of values and norms.