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This paper presents a new method for estimating the effect of child mortality on the total fertility rate (TFR). The method is based on discrete-time survival models of parity progression that allow construction of a multivariate multidimensional life table of fertility with four dimensions: woman's age, parity, duration in parity, and number of previous child deaths. Additional socio-economic variables are included in the set of predictor variables in the underlying survival models of parity progression. The life table yields a replacement rate, which measures the effect of one additional child death on the TFR. The method is illustrated by applying it to three Indian National Family Health Surveys. Major findings are that dead children are incompletely replaced, and that the replacement rate rises as the TFR falls, reflecting women's increasing ability to control their fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is argued in this paper that "perceptions" about the determinants of fertility and of fertility decline can be "politicized" by various special interest groups; that is, these perceptions can be used to push for policies and interventions which often have an ambiguous relationship to actual fertility, but are important because they already appear on the political agenda of these groups. Such politicization is facilitated by the near-universal consensus that fertility decline is a legitimate goal in the developing world, by the increasing evidence that there can be no grand theory of fertility decline, and by the willingness of scholars to attach a policy significance to all their findings. Two examples of such politicization in India are presented, one of which has a socially beneficial impact, whilst the other is potentially disruptive, to illustrate that such politicization is not without its dangers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]