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SOCIOECONOMIC FACTORS AND EFFECT ON FERTILITY OF HUSBAND-WIFE SEPARATION DUE TO MIGRATION
Summary This paper examines the migrant and non-migrant fertility differentials in a rural area of India, taking into account caste, economic and educational factors. While the separation of husband and wife due to the migration of the husband is the main cause of fertility reduction among the migrant group its effect varies according to the economic status of the couple and the wife’s education. Introduction From studies of the demographic implications of migration there is a general consensus that in the process of rural-urban migration, the fertility of migrants lies between the fertility of urban natives and rural non-migrants. The main reasons proposed for the lower fertility of migrants than non-migrants are (Population Reports 19831) that migrants may be a self selected group who would have had lower fertility than their rural neighbours even if they had not migrated2,3,4, that after they move, migrants may adapt quickly to new surroundings and adopt attitudes and behaviour including lower fertility, that are like those of other urbanites and suit city life5,3,6,4, that moving may itself lower fertility by delaying marriages, separating spouses, and reducing the desire for an immediate pregnancy7,8,9,10. However, studies of the relationship between migration and fertility are inconclusive as to whether migrant fertility is lower or higher than, or the same as, that of non-migrants. These conflicting results reflect differences in study design, level of study, analytic framework, definitions of ‘migrant’, and the measures of fertility used. The pattern of migration in rural India is such that the males migrate singly, leaving their wives and children in the village, and this separation of husbands from their wives is one of the important factors causing migrant and non-migrant fertility differentials in rural areas of India11, 12, 10, 13, 14, 15, and elsewhere2,16 Rele12 reported, that in a rural area of Uttar Pradesh in 1956, the fertility of couples where the husband worked in non-local areas (i.e. in the cities of Banaras, Calcutta and Bombay) was lower than that of couples where he worked locally; and explained this by the non-residence of the husband in the village in at least 32 per cent of cases. Visaria’s (1969) study, based on data from 23 villages in two districts of Gujarat and Maharastra, also reported lower fertility for women whose husbands were absent for more than six months than for those with the husbands present. Some recent studies have observed a greater fecundability among separated couples, but a lower fertility than among non-migrants, due to the shorter exposure time of the former group. Although these Indian studies strongly suggest that, as expected, husband-wife separation affects the fertility of migrants, the findings fall short of being conclusive because of the lack of information concerning relevant socioeconomic characteristics. This paper examines the effect of separation on migrants’ fertility in relation to current age of females, education of females, caste, and the educational and economic levels of households. The Data The data for this study come from a sample survey of Rural Development and Population Growth (RDPG) conducted during March-October, 1978, in eastern Uttar Pradesh in India The main objective of the survey was to compare the levels of fertility, mortality and migration in three types of villages representing different levels of social and economic development. The three groups of villages were termed ‘semi-urban’, ‘remote’ and ‘growth centre’ villages. Semi-urban villages are the villages near Varanasi city (Varanasi is a district of eastern Uttar Pradesh), while remote villages are those situated further from the city. The growth centre villages are those where recently new household and other types of industries have been established. A random selction of 8,6 and 5 villages was made from these three types of villages respectively. The survey included all of the 3,514 households in all 19 villages. The data from the selected households were collected by interview covering household structure, household facilities, migration, commuting, fertility, mortality and morbidity. A household was defined as a group of people who usually stay together and eat food from a common kitchen, but including the people who usually live outside the village but claim the households to be their own. Such people are generally migrants who go away to earn their livelihood but maintain contact with the household visiting it at regular intervals. Naturally, complete household migration is not included, but the migration of an entire household is very rare in the study area14. Data for each couple included birth intervals, the age of the females at various birth orders, etc., to give complete birth records for each eligible couple. A couple was regarded as eligible if both partners were alive and the age of female was below 50 years. Socioeconomic variables in the analysis were defined as follows. About 95% of households are Hindu. To take into account caste which, in rural areas, is an important determinant of occupation, education and social status and may therefore be one of the factors relevant to migration, the 35 castes in the area were grouped into five categories: Upper, Middle, Business, Functional, and Scheduled. All Muslims (the remaining 5%) were treated as a single group. Economic status of a household was classified on the basis of five factors: per caput income, type of house, possession of prestigious goods in the household, consumption of milk, and consumption of vegetables. A scoring system was devised for each and from the total score the households were classified into five groups: Low, Lower Middle, Middle, High and Very High. Similarly a scoring system was devised taking into consideration the average educational levels of members of the household as well as the highest level of any one member but considering only males of fifteen years and above. The households were classified into five educational status groups: Low, Lower Middle, Middle, High and Very High. Migrant and Non-Migrant Fertility Differentials In the survey about 83% of male migrants were married, and of them about 75% left their wives in the villages - a fairly similat pattern of husband-wife separation to that reported in other parts of India Couples were classified into two groups (i) husband migrated leaving his wife at home in the village but visiting his home occasionally (called a migrant couple), (ii) husband and wife both live together in the village (called a non-migrant couple). These two categories indicate the present residential status of couples. It is possible that there may be some couples where the male partners were migrants but had returned before the survey and were therefore classed as non-migrant. The average number of children born was 2.88 to a ‘migrant’ couple, and 3.81 to ‘non-migrant’ couples, a statistically significant difference (z = 8.19, p< .05). This difference is not due to different age distributions of females in these two groups, since a χ2 test of the distribution of females according to present age and group indicated no significance difference between them. The average number of children born to migrant couples (Table 1) is consistently lower than to non-migrant couples of all age groups. The consistent increase with age is as expected, and the tables that follow show age standarised as well as raw means for the different variables.
While the average number of children born to both groups of couples is lower for the upper castes (Table 2) than for other castes, perhaps due to their higher education and higher socioeconomic status and this is consistent over all ages, the fertility of ‘migrant’ is lower than that of ‘non-migrant’ couples for all the caste groups, except in the business castes whose number is, however, very small. While there is an inverse relationship between fertility and economic status in ‘non-migrant’ couples, ‘migrant’ couples show a curvilinear U-shaped pattern (Table 2), again consistent over all ages. Nevertheless in each economic status group, ‘migrant’ couples have a lower average number of children born than ‘non-migrant’, except in the ‘very high’ economic status group.
Similarly, considering the educational level of households (Tables 3,4 & 5) the average number of children born to a ‘migrant’ couple is lower than to a ‘non-migrant’ couple at each of the educational groups. But considering education of females, ‘migrants’ have a lower fertility than ‘non-migrants’ where the females have been educated up to middle school standard (Table 5). This pattern appears to be reversed for those households in which females have more than middle school education, but the numbers of observations for better educated women for both ‘migrant’ and ‘non-migrant’ groups are very small. Nevertheless, the analysis suggests that husband-wife separation may have little or no effect on fertility if the wife is highly educated. Thus it is clear from the consistent migrant and non-migrant fertility differences, overall and when caste, economic status and level of household education are taken into account, that husband-wife separation, due to migration, though a major influence, is not the only factor that reduces migrant fertility, for the differences are narrowed or nonexistent in households having very high economic status and in highly educated families. References
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