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In the preceding issue of this journal, a generalized version of the Brass growth balance method was proposed that made it applicable to populations that are not stable and are open to migration. In this companion paper, the results of applying this new procedure to data from India's Sample Registration System for the decades 1971-80 and 1981-90 are discussed. The results at the national level show that, during the decade 1981-90, 5 per cent of the deaths among men, 12 per cent of the deaths among women, and about 7 per cent of births were being missed by the system. Further, it is estimated that the level of under-enumeration in the 1991 Census was more than that of the 1981 Census by 0.7 per cent for males and 1.4 per cent for females. The paper also presents results for major Indian states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dowries in most regions of South Asia have steadily become larger over the last 40 years, causing widespread destitution among families with daughters to be married. This paper attempts to investigate the reasons behind dowry `inflation' with data on marriage transactions and other individual and household information from six villages in south- central India, and from the Indian census. It is found that a 'marriage squeeze' caused by population growth which resulted in a surplus of younger women in the marriage market, has played an important role in the increase in dowries. Other factors that increase the size of dowries include differences in the land holdings of the parental households, and residence in regions in the more northerly parts of India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper re-examines the matter of rural-urban fertility differentials in India. It is a commonplace that urban fertility is lower than rural fertility in the West, and it is frequently assumed that this holds for non-Western populations as well. In the case of India, previous studies of rural-urban fertility ratios have appeared to bear out this expectation. However, fertility ratios based on the most recent available age distributions show no significant rural-urban fertility differentials. This conclusion is supported by several recent sample surveys of children ever born and is consistent with the generally accepted fact that contraception is negligible even in the cities of India. It is noted that the virtual disappearance of the Indian rural-urban fertility ratio differential over time has in all likelihood resulted from a narrowing of the rural-urban infant and child mortality differential.

This paper reconstructs the trend in the population sex ratio in India between 1971 and 1996 from available information on changes in sex differentials in mortality in the country since the beginning of the century. It is estimated that, although the mortality of females relative to that of males in India has improved since 1968, the population sex ratio increased between 1971 and 1981, stayed constant between 1981 and 1991, and started to decrease only after 1991. This implies that the recorded decrease and increase in the periods 1971-81 and 1981-91 respectively were both spurious and were the results of undercounts of females in 1971 and 1991. Another implication of this finding is that, owing to the lagged effect of past mortality on current trends in the population sex ratio, this ratio is a bad proxy for use in the study of changes in differential mortality by sex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates whether past declines in mortality could have created a huge deficit of eligible men in the marriage market, and whether the ensuing competition for mates could be responsible for the coercive character the dowry system of marriage has assumed in India. New indices have been developed to measure the trends in bridegroom availability that aid in the inquiry into the demographic origins of marriage squeeze. It is contended that the marriage squeeze against women was particularly intense in India because mortality decline, in addition to age structural changes, drastically reduced the number of widowers in the population who once accounted for about one-fifth of the annual supply of bridegrooms. Our projections indicate that, as a result of recent declines in fertility, the marriage squeeze against females will ease substantially by the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, and that marriages of men will begin to be delayed more than those of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I comment on the unexpected finding from primary and secondary data that, although the age at effective marriage is significantly lower in North India compared to the southern part of the country, mother's age at first birth is very similar in both regions. That is, the first birth interval is much longer in the North. Standard socio-economic and biological reasons for this difference are found to provide incomplete and unsatisfactory explanations - instead, the longer first birth interval in North India is explained in terms of the marriage and kinship patterns in this area which lead to (i) lower frequency of intercourse and (ii) long periods of abstinence when the wife visits her parental home. Both these factors operate primarily during the first years of marriage and result in a convergence of the ages at first birth in the two regions. The argument, therefore, questions the correctness of policy prescriptions which equate early marriage with an early start of childbearing, and seek to control the latter by changing the former. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on infant mortality in rural India. The infant mortality rate also fell dramatically from about 240 per thousand births during the 1920s to about 130 during the 1960s. The rate of decline in infant mortality, however, has been slower than that in general mortality. The annual infant mortality rates for the 1970s are based on the Sample Registration System and exclude the states of Bihar and West Bengal. Notwithstanding the fluctuations in the new annual rates, the level of infant mortality during the 1970s appears to have remained constant at around 130 per thousand births. Clearly, children have not benefited to the same extent as adults from the improvements in food supply and from the preventive and curative measures implemented so far. The primary purpose of this paper is to identify these key factors. A secondary object is to develop an analytical framework to understand the determinants of infant mortality from data collected at household and village levels.

Mortality change is not usually assigned much importance as a source of population growth when future population trends are discussed. Yet it can make a significant contribution to population momentum. In populations that have experienced mortality change, cohort survivorship will continue varying for some time even if period mortality rates become constant. This continuing change in cohort survivorship can create a significant degree of mortality-induced population change, a process we call the ‘momentum of mortality change’. The momentum of mortality change can be estimated by taking the ratio of e 0 (the period life expectancy at birth) to CAL (the cross-sectional average length of life) for a given year. In industrialized nations, the momentum of mortality change can attenuate the negative effect on population growth of declining fertility or sustained below-replacement fertility. In India, where population momentum has a value of 1.436, the momentum of mortality change is the greatest contributor to its value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use data from the 1931, 1941, and 1951 censuses of India and the 1951 census of Pakistan to examine the demographic consequences of Partition in the Punjab in 1947. Had growth rates for the period 1931-41 for the Punjab as a whole continued to 1951, the population of the Punjab would have been 2.9 million larger than that recorded in 1951. Population losses from migration and mortality above age 20 were approximately 2.7 million greater between 1941 and 1951 than would have been predicted by loss rates between 1931 and 1941. We estimate a net Partition-related population movement out of the combined Punjab of about 400,000. We conclude from several lines of analysis that Partition-related population losses in the Punjab, either from deaths or unrecorded migration, were in the range 2.3-3.2 million. Partition was also marked by a dramatic religious homogenization at the district level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies changes in fertility and women's position in an Indian village. The history of women's position in Indian society is one of both advances and setbacks. It is generally agreed that in recent decades legislation on women's rights has undergone decisive, positive change. Moreover, despite a relatively abundant literature on the status of women in India, empirical studies of the social position of rural women are few, and in none has change over time been investigated. The status of women, especially their education, is thought to play an important role in influencing the number of children they desire, resultant fertility, and the survival of their children. In earlier studies in South Asia the associations between particular indicators of women's status and fertility levels have been examined, but the results related to the role of women's status in bringing about fertility change have been rather inconclusive. Age at marriage has received considerable attention in the literature on women's position, although it is not entirely clear whether it is itself an indicator of status, or a result of other status indicators such as women's education and pre-marital employment.