Temporary Childbirth Migration in India: Social and Geospatial Factors

Rutuja Patil, Kem Hospital Research Centre, Pune
Alison El Ayadi, University of California San Francisco
Dhiraj Agarwal, KEM Hospital Research Centre Pune
Abhishek Raut, Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences Sevagram
Temsunaro Rongsen Chandola, Society of Applied Studies
Ashwini Kalantri, Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences Sevagram
Nidhi Goyal, Society of Applied Studies
Kajal Tonde, KEM Hospital Research Centre Pune
Sanjay Juvekar, KEM Hospital Research Centre Pune
Rachel Murro
Nadia Diamond-Smith, University of California, San Francisco

Temporary childbirth migration, which is the practice of women returning to the natal home for sometimes many months in the pregnancy, delivery, and postpartum period, is understudied but has important demographic and health implications. Recent studies have shown that as much as 80% of women in some settings, including our own, migrate, but we don’t yet know much about the geospatial patterns of migration, and how those and other natal home related factors impact migration. Using data from a longitudinal study of 4000 women across 3 health and demographic surveillance sites in India, we describe migration patterns (distance, time to travel) and other marriage related factors (type of marriage, having a living mother or mother-in-law) and how these impact temporary childbirth migration. Women whose natal home is farther, those who had a love marriage and those whose mother was deceased were less likely to migrate. By the time of IUSSP we will have longer data from a larger sample and be able to map migration patterns and consider other factors such as urban/rural status in migration patterns.

Keywords: Internal Migration and Urbanization, Data and Methods, Health and Morbidity, Longitudinal studies

See extended abstract.