Space and Culture, India (Jun 2019)
Assessing the Impact of Religions and Castes on Population Fertility in an EAG District of India
Abstract
Culture and subculture have given an imprint on social and economic development. Alongside, it has an impact on different aspects of social change and the extent of modernisation in a region. The present study investigates the role of religion and caste in determining the fertility and the causes responsible for religious and caste fertility differential in Sagar district. This district is geographically located in the state of Madhya Pradesh. To examine the contribution of religion and caste on a change in fertility in temporal scale, both primary and secondary data have been collected and were used for the analysis of the results of this study. The primary data, which was collected through a field survey, were conducted in the study area, and the secondary data were obtained from the Census of India (1981-2011). In order to receive more accurate results, statistical techniques—Multiple Classification Analysis, Logistic Regression Analysis and Decomposition Analysis have been applied. To find out the role of individual socioeconomic characteristics on religious fertility, Multiple classification analysis technique has been used in this study and Logistic regression analysis was applied to probe the likelihood of contraception adoption by the various socioeconomic backgrounds, while, Decomposition analysis has been conducted to probe the religious and caste composition change on temporal scale fertility change. The findings demonstrate that the Muslim and Scheduled population (Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) have very high fertility than that of the other segments of society. Moreover, the inclination of fertility transition (from high to low) among other religions (Christians, Sikh and Jain) begins earlier than that of the Hindus, Muslims and Scheduled population. As per the decomposition analysis, the share of Hindu population was more prominent in reducing the fertility which gradually decreased from the decade 1981-91 to 2001-11, while the share of the schedule population and others religions have dramatically decreased during the period. On the other hand, the role of scheduled population and Muslim community has phenomenally increased for changing fertility behaviour. The analysis of the study suggests that education and adequate employment opportunities have reduced the role of religion and caste on fertility in the study area.
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