Family Size, Levels of Living and Differential Mortality in Rural India Some Paradoxes N Krishnaji The family size and death rate paradoxes discussed in this paper arise wholly out of the inappropriate use of per-capita expenditure for analysing demographic differentials. The paradoxes disappear once an appropriate variable, such as property holdings, in brought into the analysis. The issue has far- reaching implications, not only for our understanding of demographic differentials hut also for measurement of poverty.