The Hindu 08.09.2014
2-child norm for local bodies skews sex ratio
Research finds drastic consequences
India’s attempt at a China-type population control
policy appears to have had drastic but unintended consequences. Laws
enacted by State governments in the late 1990s and 2000s restricting
political eligibility to candidates with two or less children did reduce
family sizes in those States, but severely affected the sex ratio, a
new research has found.
Over the period, 11 Indian
States passed laws disqualifying persons with more than two children
from contesting panchayat elections. Some States like Bihar, Gujarat and
Uttarakhand enacted such laws later, while Himachal Pradesh, Madhya
Pradesh and Chhattisgarh repealed their laws after 2005. Uttarakhand and
Bihar implemented the law only for municipal elections.
In
a working paper, economists S. Anukriti from Boston College and
Abhishek Chakravarty of the University of Essex looked at seven States —
Rajasthan, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya
Pradesh, and Maharashtra — in which such laws were in effect between
1992 and 2005.
Using data from various rounds of
National Family Health Survey (NFHS) and District-Level Household Survey
(DLHS), the researchers found that there was a marked decline in the
number of women in the general population reporting third births exactly
one year after the new policy was announced; the first year was a
“grace period” in all of the State laws.
This decline
was relative to that State’s own history of decline in fertility as
well as other States which didn’t enact such laws.
