Two-Child Policy in India: Challenges for Incentive Tools in the Face of Conflicting Motives

Varnitha Kurli, University of Colorado Boulder
Jane Menken, University of Colorado Boulder

Two-child limits are state-specific in India. Recently, political will to enact a coordinated national two-child policy has grown. Few states even proposed population control bills that have stricter penalties for violators of the two-child limit. It's important to ascertain whether state-specific two-child programs are succeeding in curbing population growth in their current form. I use a quasi-experimental research method to examine whether two-child fertility restriction regulations are accomplishing their goals. I use NFHS data from 1992 to 2021 to compare differences in the likelihood of having a third child amongst women in states that did vs did not enact two-child policies. This study finds that the likelihood of having a third child is lower for women in states that did vs those that did not enact two-child policies. However, women with two female children and women from poor households in states with two-child limits have a higher likelihood of having a third child than similar-profile women in states that did not enact two-child policies. These results imply that the current incentive-based design of two-child policies is insufficient to reverse the fertility decisions made by two female children and poor households. These results have important implications for population control policy design.

Keywords: Population Policies, Data and Methods, Fertility, Population and Development

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