University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2014 Linkages Among Fertility, Migration, and Aging in India Apoorva Jadhav University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Asian Studies Commons, Demography, Population, and Ecology Commons, Public Health Education and Promotion Commons, and the South and Southeast Asian Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation Jadhav, Apoorva, "Linkages Among Fertility, Migration, and Aging in India" (2014). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1319. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1319 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1319 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Linkages Among Fertility, Migration, and Aging in India Abstract ABSTRACT LINKAGES AMONG FERTILITY, MIGRATION, AND AGING IN INDIA Apoorva Jadhav Dr. Jere Behrman Rapid fertility declines in India have been occurring concurrently with economic growth, changing family dynamics, and a rise in the older population- consistent with the demographic transition. This dissertation explores these relationships using the India Human Development Survey (2005-06), Building a Knowledge Base on Population Aging in India (2011), and a qualitative study. First, I investigate the relationship between increased female autonomy in partner choice and length to first birth interval, and find two important mechanisms: Women with more educational attainment are more likely choose their own partner, delay marriage, "catch-up" with others and have their first child soon after marriage. Then, unsafe premarital sexual intercourse among unmarried women either during the period between engagement and marriage, or otherwise, that results in pregnancy can mean even shorter birth intervals. Second, I explore the relationship between internal migration, remittances, and contraceptive use. I find that households with a migrant have significantly higher contraceptive use than households without a migrant, but this relationship turns negative for women whose husbands are migrants, the "absence effect". Remittances are associated with a decrease in contraceptive use, providing evidence for the "income/ ideas effect". Finally, I study various aspects of aging in India: living arrangements, health status, access to healthcare and pensions. I find that vulnerability of widows in old-age is a reflection of an accumulation of disadvantage that begins in early childhood, the urban poor are isolated in terms of living arrangements and pension receipt, and that chronic diseases and disability are related to living arrangements and interaction with family. There are three noteworthy conclusions. First: Instead of interventions focusing solely on increasing age at marriage among women, the focus should also be on the timing of first birth. Second: Family planning programs targeted at increasing contraceptive use must consider the importance of migration, diffusion of ideas, and additional income in influencing decisions. Third: Integrating health and financial needs of elderly into existing national frameworks are essential for a segment of the population that is will continue to grow in the next 100 years. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Demography First Advisor Jere Behrman Keywords Aging, Family Planning, Fertility, India, Migration, Remittances Subject Categories Asian Studies | Demography, Population, and Ecology | Public Health Education and Promotion | South and Southeast Asian Languages and Societies This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1319 LINKAGES AMONG FERTILITY, MIGRATION, AND AGING IN INDIA Apoorva Jadhav A DISSERTATION in Demography Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2014 Supervisor of Dissertation ________________________________________ Dr. Jere Behrman William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Economics Graduate Group Chairperson ________________________________________ Dr. Michel Guillot Associate Professor of Sociology Dissertation Committee Dr. Jere Behrman, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Economics Dr. Michel Guillot, Associate Professor of Sociology Dr. Devesh Kapur, Madan Lal Sobti Associate Professor for the Study of Contemporary India, Director, Center for the Advanced Study of India Dr. Emilio Parrado, Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology . LINKAGES AMONG FERTILITY, MIGRATION, AND AGING IN INDIA COPYRIGHT 2014 Apoorva Narendra Jadhav This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-ny-sa/2.0/ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are a number of individuals whose encouragement and support were central to the dissertation process and my general well-being. First, I would like to thank my incredibly supportive dissertation committee: Jere Behrman, Devesh Kapur, Michel Guillot, and Emilio Parrado for their thoughtful feedback on research ideas, guidance on methods, and reading drafts of each chapter. Special thanks to Devesh Kapur for always pushing me to answer the “So what?” question and keeping an eye on policy implications of my work in India. I am eternally grateful to the Center for the Advanced Study of India for fostering an incredibly rich intellectual and creative environment to work, particularly due to Juliana DiGuistini, Tanya Carey, Georgette Chryssanthakopoulos, Aparna Wilder, and Prakirti Nangia. I am grateful to Claudia Valeggia and the Population Aging Research Center at Penn for providing financial support to enable me to conduct my qualitative fieldwork in India. Staff at the Population Studies Center: Dawn Ryan, Yuni Thornton, and Tanya Yang helped me navigate administrative tasks, and I am thankful for them. The Demography Club was a wonderful outlet to engage with students across cohorts, discuss research, and share excitement about demography. Thanks to an accidental summer internship at the United Nations Population Fund, I was able to begin what I hope will be a long-term engagement with aging research in India, and I am fortunate to call KM Sathyanarayana, Sanjay Kumar, and KS James as colleagues and friends. None of this work would be as critical or relevant without the continuous collaboration, friendship, and exhaustive attention to detail of Jamaica Corker and Emily Vala-Haynes. The rest of the 2010 Cohort: Abhijit Visaria, Li- Chung Hu, Daniela Marshall, Collin Payne, and Julio Romero helped make studying iii for exams and celebrating successes easy. Special thanks to Ekim Cem Muyan for being a sounding board and my best critic on every single idea I sprouted. I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the University of Pennsylvania and the Center for the Advanced Study of India. My work has greatly benefited from the helpful comments of demographers at the Population Studies Center, and from conferences where I presented earlier drafts of my work at the 2011, 2012, 2013 annual meetings of the Population Association of America, 2012 meeting of the Asian Population Association in Bangkok, Thailand, and the 2013 meeting of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population in Busan, Korea. Lastly, I am grateful to the institutions that collect, clean, and house the data I have used for my research: The India Human Development Survey at the University of Maryland, National Center for Applied Economic Research (New Delhi), United Nations Population Fund, Institute for Economic Grown (New Delhi), Tata Institute for Social Science (Mumbai), and Institute for Social and Economic Change (Bangalore). Above all, the constant support, love, and reality checks provided by my family made this entire 4 year process go by incredibly quickly. To Narendra, Vasundhara, Tanmoy, Kejal, and Agastya Jadhav: Thank You. iv ABSTRACT LINKAGES AMONG FERTILITY, MIGRATION, AND AGING IN INDIA Apoorva Jadhav Dr. Jere Behrman Rapid fertility declines in India have been occurring concurrently with economic growth, changing family dynamics, and a rise in the older population- consistent with the demographic transition. This dissertation explores these relationships using the India Human Development Survey (2005-06), Building a Knowledge Base on Population Aging in India (2011), and a qualitative study. First, I investigate the relationship between increased female autonomy in partner choice and length to first birth interval, and find two important mechanisms: Women with more educational attainment are more likely choose their own partner, delay marriage, “catch-up” with others and have their first child soon after marriage. Then, unsafe premarital sexual intercourse among unmarried women either during the period between engagement and marriage, or otherwise, that results in pregnancy can mean even shorter birth intervals. Second, I explore the relationship between internal migration, remittances, and contraceptive use. I find that households with a migrant have significantly higher contraceptive use than households without a migrant, but this relationship turns negative for women whose husbands are migrants, the “absence effect”. Remittances are associated with a decrease in contraceptive use, providing evidence for the “income/ideas effect”. Finally, I study various aspects of