Articles by P N Mari Bhat

The fertility of Muslims, which was about 10 per cent higher than that of Hindus before independence, is now 25 to 30 per cent higher than the Hindu rate, and the difference according to religion is larger than the difference between the forward and depressed Hindu castes and tribes. This paper subjects the micro data from the National Family Health Surveys to a multivariate analysis to assess the contribution of socio-economic factors to the fertility differential by religion. It also explores the possible reasons for the large, residual effect of religion on fertility, and causes for the religious disparities in socio-economic conditions. The paper concludes with an assessment of the implications of the current demographic trends for the future population sizes of the two religious groups.

This paper seeks to explain the century-long trend of falling proportion of females in the Indian population. In the first part, some clues to the puzzle are unearthed by identifying the age groups, regions and social groups of the estimated 21 million females gone 'missing' between 1901 and 1991. In particular, it is shown that overtime there has been a convergence of the sex ratios of adults and children, and female-male ratios declined in regions and social groups where the adult sex ratios were substantially higher than the child sex ratios. In the first half of the last century, the overall sex ratio declined because of the decline at adult ages, especially at age 40 and over. After independence, the decline has been more concentrated at ages under 15. However, census data should be interpreted with caution because improving quality of age data on children can produce a spurious trend of falling sex ratios at certain childhood ages. In the light of these disclosures, the second part of the paper reviews the plausible explanations for the long-term trend of falling female-male ratio in India.

End of Demographic Transition by 2003 AD?
P N Mari Bhat I read with interest the recent exchange between K C Seal and P P Talwar [1] and V Gowariker [2] on the possibility of India achieving the replacement-level fertility by the year 2003. As the author of a recent paper on a similar theme in this journal [3] 1 feel obliged to make a brief comment. Like Gowariker, I am not one among those experts in India or abroad who assert that the expenditure incurred on family planning over the last four decades had gone to waste. But 1 do consider Gowariker's prediction that birth rate in India would reach 21 per thousand around 2003 as too optimistic. Given the eminence of the person making this forecast, it has the potential to create considerable confusion all around. Hence we must examine the evidence before us as carefully and as dispassionately as we could.

which the population above c = 53.83 is divided; Fi the relative frequency of each fractile group and ci the mid-point of the ith fractile group. In actual fact, we have divided the households consuming more than 295.38 grammes per capita per day into eight fractile groups, each consisting of 10.66 per cent of rural households. Using function (8), we determine the limits (c4, ci+1) within which the fractile groups lie The per capita consumption of cereals corresponding to the mid-point ci. of the ith fractile group is taken to represent the average per capita consumption of that fractile group. This is done with the help of function (9). A similar exercise is carried out to calculate the excess consumption of rural households consuming over 500 grammes per adult. This estimation is carried out separately for the cultivating and non-cultivating households in the populat ion. We have excluded agricultural labour households although some of them may consume in excess of 400 grammes per adult per day.