Women's status and fertility: successive cross-sectional evidence from Tamil Nadu, India, 1970-80.

This study explores linkages between the status of women and fertility over time in Tamil Nadu, India, using sample survey data for currently married women aged 35-44 in 1970 and 1980. The effects of individual indicators of the status of women on fertility are decomposed into effects through each of the proximate variables, notably those affecting marriage duration, marital fertility, and contraception. There is considerable variation in the direction and magnitude of the relationships between the status indicators and fertility behavior and in the relationship to the underlying mechanisms at the two points in time. On balance, the evidence suggests improvements in the status of women come to exert an increasingly negative effect on fertility over the course of demographic transition.