Effects of diffusion and education on women’s fertility in India

Abstract This paper investigates independent and joint effects of education and diffusion of information on fertility choices of women in India. Two dimensions of diffusion are social learning and social influence. Social learning implies women’s exposure to mass media, membership of social groups, social network, and the presence of other married women in the household. Social influence entails gender roles in the household, women’s financial autonomy, and power relationships among spouses in the household. Negative binomial regression models are run on the India Human Development Survey Panel data (IHDS 2005 and IHDS-II 2011–12) to test this study’s hypotheses. Results show that education has a negative and independent effect on women’s fertility. Greater exposure to various forms of mass media and access to social networks that measure social learning diffusion variables lead to lower fertility. Sharing a household with other married women has a positive influence on women’s fertility. Social influence channels of diffusion, particularly when power relations in household are skewed against women, leads to higher fertility. Several measures of diffusion also interact with women’s education in influencing their fertility. Policy implications are discussed.