India proved that development is the best contraceptive. Now, we need to focus on adapting to the demographic destiny through careful planning.
We’ve made the right choices, the next step is fixing the pieces of the population puzzle.
NCAER - NATIONAL DATA INNOVATION CENTRE
India proved that development is the best contraceptive. Now, we need to focus on adapting to the demographic destiny through careful planning.
We’ve made the right choices, the next step is fixing the pieces of the population puzzle.
India’s growing economy is lifting families out of poverty but often onto a precarious perch. A single disaster can push them right back. Policy, obsessed with counting the poor, ignores the question of helping ‘newly poor’.
Background: Fertility histories are subject to measurement errors such as incorrect birth dates, incorrect birth orders, incorrect sex, and omissions. These errors can bias demographic estimates such as fertility rates and child mortality rates.
Objective: We focus on births missing in fertility histories. We estimate the prevalence of such omissions and study their associated factors.
Methods: We leverage a panel survey (the India Human Development Survey) where the same women were interviewed in two waves several years apart. We compare data across waves and identify omitted births. Omissions in the second wave are modeled as a function of several child, mother, household, and survey interviewer variables. Models are fit separately to omissions reported alive or dead in the first wave.
Results: We conservatively estimate the prevalence of omissions at 4%. A large majority of omitted births are those of dead children, especially infants, with children in poorer households at greater risk of being omitted. For children alive in wave 1, female children are much more likely to be omitted in wave 2 compared to male children. Interviewers can detect respondent behaviors associated with omissions.
Conclusions: Omissions in fertility histories are non-ignorable. They do not randomly occur, and they affect some population subgroups and some interview contexts more than others.
Contribution: We investigate the understudied but important phenomenon of omitted births in fertility histories. We bring attention to possible biases in demographic estimates. We shed light on the survey process and propose strategies for minimizing bias through improved survey design.
NCAER National Data Innovation Centre
Measurement Brief | 2024-02
Welcome to the fifth issue of GenderTalk from the NCAER-National Data Innovation Centre’s Gender Hub. Nancy Folbre and colleagues in the 2005 special issue of Feminist Economics – Gender and Ageing noted that the public discussion on ageing, even in developed countries, has focused more on the financial burden that the increasing number of elderly populations will impose on younger generations, while the gendered aspect of this demographic transformation has largely been ignored in the public discourse. In this issue of GenderTalk, we examine population ageing in India from a gendered perspective.
GenderTalk is a space where scholars, policymakers, and civil society members can engage with each other on a theme vital to women’s well-being in India. For previous issues, scroll to the bottom.
In particular, this brief discusses the following:
1. Gender and Ageing: Challenges Faced by Elderly Women in India – In the introductory article, Debasis Barik (NCAER) talks about the growing feminization during old age and accentuates the need to increase the magnitude and coverage of old age ….more
2. Financial Dependency and the Choice of Living among the Elderly Population in India – Sujoy Kumar Majumdar (Raiganj University) and Brotin Saha (Gangarampur College) have explored the link between financial dependency and choice of living arrangements among elderly men and women in India….more
3. Gendered Time-Use among Indian Older Adults: Findings from LASI (2017-2018) – Using LASI wave 1 data, Ashwin Tripathy (FLAME University) has discussed the time use pattern of older individuals. Her focus on the differential use of leisure time between elderly men and women has contributed to our approach towards healthy and successful ageing….…more
4. Unveiling the Intersectional Experiences of Gender, Ageing, and Widowhood in India – The sharp gender disparities in access to resources, coupled with patriarchal norms that tie women’s claims on resources to marriage, render them vulnerable during widowhood. In this article, Sreerupa (Institute of Social Studies Trust) has shed some light on the status of older widowed women in India…..more
5. Gender and Ageing: What LASI reveals on India’s older women’s disadvantage? – Drawing insights from the LASI wave 1 data, Perianayagam Arokiasamy (Former Professor, NCAER) discussed the susceptibility of older women to various health conditions. He focused on the physical, psychological, and functional health of elderly women in India.….more
6. Conversation with Anupama Dutta (HelpAge India). HelpAge India promotes elder-friendly policies and their implementation for the last several decades. In this conversation, Anupama has discussed at length the programs that they run, their gender focus, the challenges they face, and some areas requiring policy focus.…more
READS…from around the web
Angrisani, M., Jain, U., & Lee, J. (2020). Sex differences in cognitive health among older adults in India. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 68, S20-S28. Link
Chattopadhyay, A., Khan, J., Bloom, D. E., Sinha, D., Nayak, I., Gupta, S., Lee, J., & Perianayagam, A. (2022). Insights into labor force participation among older adults: Evidence from the longitudinal ageing study in India. Journal of Population Ageing, 15(1), 39-59. Link
Chen, M. A. (1997). Listening to widows in rural India. Women: A cultural review, 8(3), 311-318. Link
Dommaraju, P. (2015). One-person households in India. Demographic Research, 32, 1239-1266. Link
Hirway, I. (2010). Time-Use surveys in developing countries: An assessment. In Unpaid work and the economy: Gender, time use and poverty in developing countries, Editors:Antonopouls, R. and Hirway, I (pp. 252-324). London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. Link
International Institute for Population Sciences & United Nations Population Fund (2023). India Ageing Report 2023, Caring for Our Elders: Institutional Responses. United Nations Population Fund, New Delhi. Link
Sreerupa, S. I. Rajan, A. Shweta, Y. Saito, & R. Malhotra (2018). Living longer: For better or worse? Changes in life expectancy with and without mobility limitation among older persons in India between 1995–1996 and 2004. International Journal of Population Studies, 4(2), 23-34. Link
United Nations. (2002). Report of the Second World Assembly on Ageing: Madrid, 8-12 April 2002. New York: United Nations. Link
Click here to download the current measurement brief
This measurement brief is part of the Gender Hub led by Dr. Pallavi Choudhuri and Dr. Sonalde Desai. The Gender Hub initiative is a part of the National Data Innovation Centre at the National Council of Applied Economic Research. GenderTalk, is a space where scholars, policymakers, and civil society members can engage with each other on a theme vital to women’s well-being in India.
Our website can be found at https://ndic.ncaer.org/research-theme/gender-data-hub/.
Previous Issues of GenderTalk:
2024-01: Gender and Internal Migration; | Download
2023-03: Women’s Agency in Marriage Choice; | Download
Instead of debating the cause of the fall and the rise in the proportion of women farmers and family helpers, we should look to expand women’s opportunities outside of agriculture, which are better paying.
