IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/applec/v54y2022i54p6286-6302.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Fertility targets: linkages between desire for sons and sterilization in India

Author

Listed:
  • Mehreen Mookerjee
  • Manini Ojha
  • Sanket Roy

Abstract

Sterilization is the most widely used form of family planning in India with the burden of sterilization falling almost entirely on women. The existence of a strong son preference and a male-biased sex ratio are also well known in India. In this paper, we investigate the inter-linkages between female sterilization and the desire for sons in the country. Specifically, we examine the causal impact of a woman’s fertility targets for sons being met on her sterilization decision. To measure whether her fertility target is met, we utilize information on her actual versus ideal number of sons. Exploiting exogenous variation in the sex of the firstborn as an instrument in a conditional mixed process estimation, we find that meeting her fertility target for sons increases the probability of a woman’s sterilization by 25.4% points. Moreover, once she has had her ideal number of sons, the probability of getting sterilized within 4 years of getting married increases by 9.4% points whereas delayed sterilization becomes less likely. Our estimates are robust to alternative estimation strategies.

Suggested Citation

  • Mehreen Mookerjee & Manini Ojha & Sanket Roy, 2022. "Fertility targets: linkages between desire for sons and sterilization in India," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(54), pages 6286-6302, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:54:y:2022:i:54:p:6286-6302
    DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2022.2083069
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2022.2083069
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00036846.2022.2083069?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Ojha, Manini & Babbar, Karan, 2023. "Power to choose? Examining the link between contraceptive use and domestic violence," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1336, Global Labor Organization (GLO).

    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:taf:applec:v:54:y:2022:i:54:p:6286-6302. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEC20 .

    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.