IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0292802.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Temporary childbirth migration and maternal health care in India

Author

Listed:
  • Nadia Diamond-Smith
  • Lakshmi Gopalakrishnan
  • Sumeet Patil
  • Lia Fernald
  • Purnima Menon
  • Dilys Walker
  • Alison M El Ayadi

Abstract

Background: Women in South Asia often return to their natal home during pregnancy, for childbirth, and stay through the postpartum period—potentially impacting access to health care and health outcomes in this important period. However, this phenomenon is understudied (and not even named) in the demographic or health literature, nor do we know how it impacts health. Objective: The aim of this study is to measure the magnitude, timing, duration, risk factors and impact on care of this phenomenon, which we name Temporary Childbirth Migration. Methods: Using data from 9,033 pregnant and postpartum women collected in 2019 in two large states of India (Madhya Pradesh and Bihar) we achieve these aims using descriptive statistics and logistic regression models, combined with qualitative data from community health workers about this practice. Results: We find that about one third of women return to their natal home at some point in pregnancy or postpartum, mostly clustered close to the time of delivery. Younger, primiparous, and non-Hindu women were more likely to return to their natal home. Women reported that they went to their natal home because they believed that they would receive better care; this was born out by our analysis in Bihar, but not Madhya Pradesh, for prenatal care. Conclusions: Temporary childbirth migration is common, and, contrary to expectations, did not lead to disruptions in care, but rather led to more access to care. Contribution: We describe a hitherto un-named, underexplored yet common phenomenon that has implications for health care use and potentially health outcomes.

Suggested Citation

  • Nadia Diamond-Smith & Lakshmi Gopalakrishnan & Sumeet Patil & Lia Fernald & Purnima Menon & Dilys Walker & Alison M El Ayadi, 2024. "Temporary childbirth migration and maternal health care in India," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 19(2), pages 1-29, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0292802
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0292802
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0292802
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0292802&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0292802?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Farzana Afridi & Taryn Dinkelman & Kanika Mahajan, 2018. "Why are fewer married women joining the work force in rural India? A decomposition analysis over two decades," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 31(3), pages 783-818, July.
    2. Mistry, Ritesh & Galal, Osman & Lu, Michael, 2009. "Women's autonomy and pregnancy care in rural India: A contextual analysis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(6), pages 926-933, September.
    3. Shelah Bloom & David Wypij & Monica Gupta, 2001. "Dimensions of women’s autonomy and the influence on maternal health care utilization in a north indian city," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 38(1), pages 67-78, February.
    4. Brainerd, Elizabeth & Menon, Nidhiya, 2014. "Seasonal effects of water quality: The hidden costs of the Green Revolution to infant and child health in India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 49-64.
    5. Lu, Yao & Qin, Lijian, 2014. "Healthy migrant and salmon bias hypotheses: A study of health and internal migration in China," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 41-48.
    6. Acevedo-Garcia, Dolores & Sanchez-Vaznaugh, Emma V. & Viruell-Fuentes, Edna A. & Almeida, Joanna, 2012. "Integrating social epidemiology into immigrant health research: A cross-national framework," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(12), pages 2060-2068.
    7. Chen, Juan, 2011. "Internal migration and health: Re-examining the healthy migrant phenomenon in China," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 72(8), pages 1294-1301, April.
    8. Tamás Bartus, 2017. "Multilevel multiprocess modeling with gsem," Stata Journal, StataCorp LLC, vol. 17(2), pages 442-461, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Paul, Pintu & Saha, Ria & McDougal, Lotus & Gopalakrishnan, Lakshmi, 2025. "Marital choice, spousal communication, and contraceptive self-efficacy and use among newly married girls in India: Evidence from the UDAYA study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 373(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nadia G. Diamond-Smith & Rutuja Patil & Dhiraj Agarwal & Rachel Murro & Shrish Raut & Sanjay Juvekar & Alison M. El Ayadi, 2025. "Defining and Characterizing Temporary Childbirth Migration in India," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 44(2), pages 1-19, April.
    2. Yidong Wu & Yuanyuan Zha & Mengyuan Ge & Hao Sun & Honghong Gui, 2022. "The Impact of Urban Health Care on Migrants’ Settlement Intention: Evidence from China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(22), pages 1-19, November.
    3. Pratley, Pierre, 2016. "Associations between quantitative measures of women's empowerment and access to care and health status for mothers and their children: A systematic review of evidence from the developing world," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 119-131.
    4. Thapa, Deependra Kaji & Niehof, Anke, 2013. "Women's autonomy and husbands' involvement in maternal health care in Nepal," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 1-10.
    5. Shroff, Monal R. & Griffiths, Paula L. & Suchindran, Chirayath & Nagalla, Balakrishna & Vazir, Shahnaz & Bentley, Margaret E., 2011. "Does maternal autonomy influence feeding practices and infant growth in rural India?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 73(3), pages 447-455, August.
    6. Afridi, Farzana & Bishnu, Monisankar & Mahajan, Kanika, 2020. "Gendering Technological Change: Evidence from Agricultural Mechanization," IZA Discussion Papers 13712, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Marta Bengoa & Christopher Rick, 2018. "The effect of Hukou registration policy on rural-to-urban migrants’ health," WIDER Working Paper Series 028, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    8. Marta Bengoa & Christopher Rick, 2020. "Chinese Hukou Policy and Rural-to-Urban Migrants’ Health: Evidence from Matching Methods," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 46(2), pages 224-259, April.
    9. Sonalde Desai & Lijuan Wu, 2010. "Structured Inequalities—Factors Associated with Spatial Disparities in Maternity Care in India," Margin: The Journal of Applied Economic Research, National Council of Applied Economic Research, vol. 4(3), pages 293-319, August.
    10. Viens, Laura J. & Clouston, Sean & Messina, Catherine R., 2016. "Women's autonomy and cervical cancer screening in the Lesotho Demographic and Health Survey 2009," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 23-30.
    11. Christina J. Diaz & Liwen Zeng & Ana P. Martinez-Donate, 2018. "Investigating Health Selection Within Mexico and Across the US Border," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 37(2), pages 181-204, April.
    12. Etienne Breton, 2019. "Modernization and Household Composition in India, 1983–2009," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 45(4), pages 739-766, December.
    13. Ying Ji & Yanling Wang & Lei Sun & Yan Zhang & Chun Chang, 2016. "The Migrant Paradox in Children and the Role of Schools in Reducing Health Disparities: A Cross-Sectional Study of Migrant and Native Children in Beijing, China," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(7), pages 1-12, July.
    14. Weilong Li, 2022. "How Urban Life Exposure Shapes Risk Factors of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs): An Analysis of Older Rural-to-Urban Migrants in China," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 41(1), pages 363-385, February.
    15. Kathryn M. Yount & Kristin E. VanderEnde & Sylvie Dodell & Yuk Fai Cheong, 2016. "Measurement of Women’s Agency in Egypt: A National Validation Study," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 128(3), pages 1171-1192, September.
    16. Tulsi Ram Bhandari & V Raman Kutty & T K Sundari Ravindran, 2016. "Women’s Autonomy and Its Correlates in Western Nepal: A Demographic Study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(1), pages 1-9, January.
    17. Paglino, Eugenio & Elo, Irma T. & Martikainen, Pekka, 2025. "Internal migration, health selection, and the salmon bias: A register-based study of Finland," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 380(C).
    18. Robin A. Richardson, 2018. "Measuring Women’s Empowerment: A Critical Review of Current Practices and Recommendations for Researchers," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 137(2), pages 539-557, June.
    19. Philip Anglewicz & Mark VanLandingham & Lucinda Manda-Taylor & Hans-Peter Kohler, 2018. "Health Selection, Migration, and HIV Infection in Malawi," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 55(3), pages 979-1007, June.
    20. Yanwei Lin & Qi Zhang & Wen Chen & Jingrong Shi & Siqi Han & Xiaolei Song & Yong Xu & Li Ling, 2016. "Association between Social Integration and Health among Internal Migrants in ZhongShan, China," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(2), pages 1-15, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0292802. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.