‘State culture has greater influence than education’

NEW DELHI: The higher the educational level of a woman, the lower the total number of children she will have, according to conventional wisdom. However, recently released official data from 2017 on the total fertility rate (TFR) or the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime shows the connection may be more complex. For one, the culture of a state might be a greater determinant of fertility, with illiterate rural women in Tamil Nadu having a lower fertility rate than urban graduates in Uttar Pradesh.There’s a consistent pattern across states of illiterate women and those with no formal education having lower fertility rates than those with below primary level education. It raises the question: does little education lead to higher TFR? Is a threshold number of years of education required to reduce fertility? Experts say this pattern – referred to as “inverted-J” — has been observed in other countries. However, they caution that this pattern in 2017 data, and to some extent in 2016 data, can’t be taken as significant unless it stays for 4-5 years.The pattern tends to be more pronounced in high-fertility populations, say experts. However, in the 2017 data, this pattern held true even in states with lower fertility. For instance, in Bihar , a high fertility state, the TFR of women who have not completed primary schooling is 4.4 compared to 3.7 for illiterate women. Similarly, in Odisha with an overall low fertility rate of just 1.9, the TFR of illiterate women was 2 compared to a TFR of 3.6-3.5 among those with primary level schooling or below. At the all-India level, the TFR for women with below primary education was 3.1 compared to 2.9 for illiterate women and 2.4 for those without formal education.Dr KS James, director of the International Institute for Population Studies in Mumbai, explained that this inverted-J pattern in fertility is seen not only in education levels but also in income levels. “Usually there is an inverse relationship between education or income and fertility, but it has been observed that fertility could go up with a slight increase in education or income level. But eventually, fertility declines with higher levels of education,” said Dr James. However, Prof PM Kulkarni, a renowned demographer and population expert, pointed out that the pattern was clearly discernible only in the 2017 data. “It could be because the number of illiterates in all states has been falling and so the sample size for illiterates might be small, leading to errors. At this stage, I wouldn’t call it a trend. We need to see it for three or four years,” said Prof Kulkarni.Dr James pointed out that the culture of a state or geography had greater influence than education or socio-economic characteristics on fertility while explaining why even urban graduates in high-fertility states like UP or Chhattisgarh had fertility rates of 2.2 and 2 respectively compared to illiterate rural women in states like Maharashtra and West Bengal with fertility rates of 1.3 and 1.4 respectively.