The determinants of female decision-making power and its demographic implications: An analysis of northern and southern India.

Over the last 20 years there has been an onslaught of research on the determinants of "womens autonomy" and the role of female autonomy in hastening demographic transition. Unfortunately the complex nature of female autonomy and the challenges of accurately measuring each of its elements have hindered past efforts to elucidate these relationships (Mason 19851995; Agarwala 2004). As a result many hypotheses about the impact of female autonomy on fertility decline remain speculative and we have limited understanding of how policy may be used to decrease fertility via the influence of female autonomy. Whether fertility reduction is necessarily desirable is a disputed issue which is beyond the scope of this paper; however population control is a concern in at least some developing nations. Hence for the purposes of this paper I assumed that fertility reduction is a worthwhile goal and explored the question of whether female autonomy plays a role in the pursuit of this goal. In the present study I focused on a single aspect of female autonomy: intra-household decision-making power. I examined its determinants as well as its relationship to fertility considering three fertility-related variables for a comprehensive view of reproductive preferences and behaviours. Rather than using a simple summed index as is common in the literature (Agarwala 2004) I used a weighted index in order to more accurately proxy for decision-making power. I examined a large region in pursuit of broadly applicable results and separated northern and southern India for greater accuracy. This study also considered two explanatory variables which past research has examined very little but are of great interest from a policy perspective: exposure to mass media and educational difference between spouses. (excerpt)