MIDDLE CLASS DREAMS: INDIA’S ONE CHILD FAMILIES

Alaka Basu (JNU and Cornell)Sonalde Desai (NCAER and Univ. of Maryland)

Worldwide Fertility Transition• Two dominant narratives:

1. First demographic transition• High fertility => Replacement fertility, 2 children/family• Social capital => Human capital• Social & economic benefits of fertility => Largely economic costs

of fertility2. Second demographic transition• 2 children => one child or no child• Focus on child quality => personal freedom and fulfillment• Economic determinants of fertility => Cultural determinants

Structure of presentation…• Overview of first and second demographic transition theories• Description of India’s one-child families• Definition of one-child family• Are these families single-child by choice or happenstance?• Life-style differences between single-child and multiple

children families• Female labour force participation• Consumption patterns• Personal freedom• Investments in children

• Crystal ball???

Stylized Narrative … (e.g. Lesthaege and

Neels, 2002)1st Transition

• Preoccupation with basic material needs• Segregated gender roles• Ordered life course

transitions• Prudent marriage• Dominance of single

family model• Familistic social policies

2nd Transition

• Focus on higher order needs• Individual autonomy,

self-actualisation• Gender equality• Female economic

autonomy• Flexible life course

organisation and multiple lifestyles

Chinks in this narrative of demographic rupture between the first and the second transition ….

• Extremely low fertility in Italy and Spain which remain far more traditional than Denmark or Sweden

• American fertility continues to hover around a two child family norm, even for the non-immigrant population

• Rush to low fertility in eastern Europe following transition to market economy in the context of economic crisis

Low fertility in India….• Natural preoccupation in India with population growth• Low fertility remains far on the horizon, particularly if we

believe the story of second demographic transition• Female labour force participation is low, in fact the 66th round of

NSS documents 6 percentage point decline in FLFP rates• Marriage age is rising but only due to sharp decline in child

marriage, marriage remains almost universal• A post-modern lifestyle seems far in future – if at all

Yet … emergence of one-child families

Current Age NFHS-I1992-93

NFHS-III2005-6

15-19 74% 76%

20-24 36% 41%

25-29 13% 17%

30-34 6% 9%

35-39 4% 6%

40-44 3% 5%

45-49 3% 4%

Proportion of Women at Parity 1 (Base: Currently Married Women with at least one child)

India’s one-child families are urban, educated and rich(Source: IHDS 2004-5)

All India

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India Human Development Survey 2004-5 (IHDS)• IHDS is a nationally representative household survey• 41,554 households from 33 states/union territories• Analysis based on 33,524 ever-married women age 15-49• IHDS unique as a multi-topic survey with information about

income, consumption, employment, education as well as demographic behaviours

• Allows for an analysis linking demographic behaviour to life-style choices

Sample divided into:

• Large families (66%) – families with 2 or more living children.• One child (6%) – families with one living child where

the oldest child is at least 5 years old, the mother is still married, and the family has not experienced any child mortality.• Censored (28%) – families with no children or with a

single living child that meets one or more of the following conditions. • Oldest child’s age less than 5 years.• Mother widowed, divorced or separated.• Child has a sibling that has died.

All Women N=33539

No Children (Censored) N=2583

Child mortality (Censored) N=1881

Any Children N=29075

Oldest < 5 yrs(Censored) N=4828

Oldest 5+ years N=24247

One living child N=2093

Divorced/Widowed (Censored) N=235

Pure one-child family N=1858

Two or more childrenN=22154

Sample Distribution

Analytic Focus:• We compare one child families with large families• Drop censored families from the analysis since we don’t know

where they are likely to end up• Our decision of waiting 5 years before placing a family in “one

child” category based on the observation than more than 90% of the 2nd births take place within 5 years of first birth

• Sensitivity analysis done with 8 year cut-off, results remain similar but due to dwindling sample sizes, certain analyses no longer possible

Are one child families accidental?

• Could it be that some women wait until late in life to marry and hence secondary sterility may limit them to one child?• No because 95% of the single-child families record mother’s age

at first birth as being below age 30• Fertility intentions remain subject to measurement error but

about 73% of the mothers with a single child say they do not want more children; 22% are sterilized.

• Some families could remain single-child by default either due to child death or due to widowhood/divorce. • We have treated these as censored, we do not know what they

wanted or where they might have ended up had they not experienced these events

Final analytical sample• One-child families --- N=1858• Two+ children families -- N=22154

Why stop at a single child?• Demographic literature documents strong pressures for having

at least two children. • So why stop at one?

• Aspirations for self• Women’s desire to participate in the labour force • Tradeoff between consumption and children• Personal fulfillment, leisure etc.

• Aspirations for children• Investments in children’s education• Children as a ladder to social mobility

Inferring Motivation from Behavior

• It is difficult to know what prompted these families to stop at one child but linking their current behavior to family size provides some guide to association, if not causal pathways.

• Behaviors of interest:1. Labor force participation for women2. Higher consumption3. Family dynamics, personal freedom, leisure4. Investments in children

Results from multivariate analyses

• Ordinary least squares or logistic regressions• Controlling for• Age of the woman• Education• Caste/religion• Place of residence• Household income

• Comparing one child families against families with two or more children and excluding censored families

Women with one child are not more likely to work• Lower rather than higher labour force participation (Odds

ratio=0.76**)• This effect is mainly in the rural areas

• Even when we restrict our focus to salaried work, where childbearing imposes greatest constraints, little relationship between family size and work (Odds ratio=0.98 NS)

Families with one child are no more consumption oriented than others

• Controlling for household income, families with one child own a little more “stuff” than those with more children but this difference is dwarfed compared to other differences, e.g. on an index of 23 assets one child families have 0.11 more assets and this difference is not significant.• To put it in perspective, differences between illiterate and

primary educated women is 0.89• For large item purchase (car, AC, refrigerator etc.), again the

odds ratio is 1.13 but not significant• Difference between illiterate and primary educated women is

odds ratio of 2.32 & significant.

Women with one child have no more personal freedom than others

• They do not watch more TV (an extra 7 mins. Per day)• They are only about 1.02 times more likely to visit their natal

families frequently, and this difference is not significant• They are 1.05 times more likely to go with their husbands to

movies/bazaars and again, this difference is not statistically significant

• They are less likely to have frequent communication with their husbands

However, one child families do invest more in this child• Only children aged 6-14 have significantly greater educational

expenditure than children from smaller families• For logged expenditure – diff of 0.24**• Because this is a non-linear model, when averaged over different

values of covariates, the difference between only child families and larger families in expenditure is Rs. 449** (mean expenditure is about 1500 and median 650 so this is a large difference)

• Only children at 1.35 times more likely to be enrolled in private schools, significant at 0.01 level

• None of the gender disadvantages are seen for girls from one child family

• Only children aged 8-11 are 1.71 times as likely to be able to perform basic arithmetic operations as children from large families

Fertility-Social Mobility Hypothesis

• Our results support the fertility-social mobility hypothesis persuasively presented by Susan Greenhalgh for Chinese families

• Families restrict fertility in order invest in their only child and gain social mobility through this child

Changes in Indian Economy may accelerate this trend

• Growth of Indian middle class is quite different from growth in the West. Proportion of salaried jobs have not expanded, rewards to these jobs have.

• Greater income inequality with high rewards to white collar jobs• Higher competition for admission into coveted occupations• Growing privatization of education and concern with educational

quality

Implications of one-child families for future inequality• Demographic underpinning of future inequality• Cascading inequalities• Rising privatisation increases the impact of family vis-à-vis the

state in child outcomes• Family characteristics affect child outcomes directly and through

higher investments by one-child families• Compositional changes due to fertility differentials imply that

different population groups grow differentially, amplifying existing inequalities