Sociology Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2804
Browse
2 results
Search Results
Item "Fertility as Mobility" in India: Salience of Caste, Education and Employment Opportunities(2012) Banerji, Manjistha; Desai, Sonalde; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this dissertation, we use the "fertility as mobility" approach to study the determinants of fertility outcomes in India. More elaborately, we re- examine the Beckerian hypothesis of a tradeoff between number and quality of children with increasing income levels using the India Human Development Survey (2005) data. Our contention is that it is not necessarily the case that couples at higher end of the income scale will have fewer but higher quality children as compared to those lower down the income scale. Drawing on the seminal work of Susan Greenhalgh on "fertility as mobility" in late nineteenth century traditional Chinese society (1989) and modifying Coale's three necessary and sufficient conditions for demographic transition (1975), we argue that even couples lower down the income scale will be willing to invest in quality rather than quantity of children if the institutional framework in terms of education and employment opportunities enhance mobility prospects. We also find considerable persistence of occupations across generations suggesting that increasing occupational mobility across generations particularly for those lower down the caste hierarchy is essential for mobility to be a relevant factor in fertility decisions for disenfranchised castes.Item Is Education associated with a Transition towards Autonomy in Partner Choice? A Case Study of India(2008-12-15) Banerji, Manjistha; Martin, Steven P.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This paper examines if self-arranged marriages (or love marriages) have replaced parent-arranged marriages as the dominant form of marriage in India. In particular, I examine if women of recent cohorts (born around 1980) are less likely to report arranged marriages than women of older cohorts (born around 1956). I also examine if educated women are less likely to report arranged marriages than their less educated counterparts. Results from multinomial regression analysis suggest that women of recent cohorts are more likely to report a parent arranged marriages with their consent. Education is associated with greater autonomy in partner choice decision but it is most strongly associated with parent arranged marriages with consent. I conclude that in a context where a dating culture is not normative, parent arranged marriages with consent may be the best way to accommodate individual choice while retaining some of the traditional parental control over spouse choice.