Economic Development, Gender Inequality and Demographic Outcomes: Evidence from India

This paper examines the determinants of fertility, child mortality and female disadvantage in child survival in India, using a district-level panel data set linking 1981 and 1991 censuses. The results of the paper, inter alia, question the dominant view in this area which asserts that it is variables directly relating to women’s agency (specifically, the female literacy rate and the female labour-force participation rate) which have played the crucial roles here. Instead, it is variables reflecting the general level of development and modernisation which are seen to have had the greatest impact in reducing fertility and child mortality during the period of the study. So far as the female disadvantage in child survival is concerned, while both economic development and women’s agency variables are seen to have had significant effects in reducing this disadvantage, the results also suggest that with continued economic development, the two women’s agency variables lose their relative significance in influencing this disadvantage. The paper also finds that the "cultural" bias which results in female disadvantage in child survival operates most strongly against female children between the ages of 1 and 2. There has been a change here over time, with discrimination against older female children declining and that against the female children between ages of 1 and 2 increasing. The paper concludes with some brief comments on the policy implications of the findings.