Unwanted Fertility and Impacts on Self-Rated Health of Women in India

Esha Chatterjee, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
Johny K D, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur

This is the first study in India to move beyond women’s sexual and reproductive health and examine the consequences of having an unwanted birth on women’s general health. We use longitudinal nationally representative data from the two rounds of the India Human Development Survey (2005 and 2012) for 3,776 currently married, non-pregnant women aged 18-40 at baseline who were interviewed across both rounds. Results from multivariate linear and logistic regression show that mothers having an unwanted birth between the two time periods are likely to have worse self-rated health in the future and are more likely to experience a deterioration in health between the two waves compared to those who have a wanted birth, after accounting for all other maternal and household characteristics. Results are robust to models accounting for propensity weighting.

Keywords: Fertility, Health and Morbidity, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, Longitudinal studies

See paper.