Recent Changes in Micro-Level Determinants of Fertility in India: Evidence from National Family Health Survey Data

This paper empirically investigates the determinants of fertility and their changes in recent years drawing upon large household data sets in India, namely National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data over the period 1992-2006. It is found that there is a negative and significant association between the number of children and parental education when we apply OLS, ordered logit and pseudo panel models, while in case of IV model only mother's literacy is negatively associated with the number of children. It is implied by the results of OLS and ordered logit models that households belonging to Scheduled Castes (SCs) tend to have more children than the rest. Our results suggest that policies of national and state governments to support social infrastructure, such as school at various levels and to promote both male and female education, particularly for households belonging to SCs, would be very important to reduce fertility and to speed down the population growth.