1. Original Scientific Paper
Abstract

The study strives to assess the fertility differentials by women’s present age, influence of incidence of marriage (whether once or more than once married /consanguineous or non-consanguineous marriage), their reproductive wastage and the effect of socio-economic factors on reproductive wastage of women in a rural Muslim population of North-East India. Data for the present study were collected on 1034 married women (15-49 years) through structured schedule by cross sectional method and then presented in terms of percentage, mean, and standard error. Student’s t-test and ANOVA test were also applied to see the significant difference. The multiple regression analysis was used to predict whether or not reproductive wastage depends on some other independent variables. . The present study reveals that mean live births (fertility) are directly proportional to the advancement of age of women, which is probably due to the fact that higher number of pregnancies in older women results from a lack of education and antenatal care leading to concomitant miscarriages and stillbirths. Marriage among the Assamese Muslims was found to be very ‘stable’ as only 12 females (1.17%) of all married individuals reportedly changed their mates. There are 23.73% women, whose marriage is consanguineous while 77.27% women have non-consanguineous marriage. In the former group, 38 (3.7%) women have given birth to physically deformed children while not a single case of physically deformed children was reported among the mothers of the latter group. The frequency of reproductive wastage, of all the pregnancies considered in this study, was found to be 14.32%. Further the study shows that women’s age, maternal education, type of family, household income and antenatal care are important factors in regulating the fertility and reproductive wastage of a population.

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