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An investment model of the demand for children is developed to demonstrate that old-age security provided by children is an important consideration in the fertility decisions of parents. "The paper is organized as follows: Section II presents the importance of children as a source of old age support and risk mitigating mechanism. The investment approach for the demand for children is presented in Section III. Section IV...explores the implications in the context of a recent household survey conducted in rural India. Finally, the findings are summarised in Section V.", (excerpt)

"In the present paper an attempt is made to study the inter-generational occupational mobility in three types of developing villages [in India] that are heterogeneous in many socio-economic and other aspects. The specific objectives of this study are: (i) to study the overall occupational mobility of fathers-sons and to find out the predicted equilibrium structure, (ii) to find the waiting time (number of generations) that sons will stay in their fathers' occupational state before moving to other ones and (iii) to test the hypothesis of identical class structures in these three types of heterogeneous societies." The data are from a 1978 sample survey, and "the basic simple time-homogeneous Markov Chain model by Prais (1955) is employed....", (excerpt)

The eradication of smallpox was dependent on the attainment of a high level of herd immunity during the consolidation and maintenance phases of the eradication program, after mass vaccination effort had reduced the incidence of the disease to a few endemic areas in the world. Immunity was possible through the immunization of susceptible population. Attainment of effective immunization in both large and small countries, with both concentrated and dispersed population settlement patterns, was dependent not only on improved vaccination technology, notably the widespread availability of heat-stable freeze-dried vaccine and the use of the bifurcated needle, but also on the way eradication programs were designed and implemented. This paper will outline important components of the smallpox eradication program, particularly, information management, personnel management, and material resources management. Although they were critical to the eventual success of the program, there has been little consolidated effort to review these management strategies. The paper, to a large extent, concentrates on the eradication programs of Bangladesh, India, and West Africa, given that these come to the forefront in terms of reviewing management strategies in the internationally available literature.

Following the comparative method of analysis, this paper examines the marital status characteristics of rural to urban migrants in 3 Indian states-Biharm West Bengal, and Kerala. The discussion is based on the Census of India, 1971. The main thrust of this paper is that as these 3 states tend to differ markedly in terms of the social and cultural value system, the marital status characteristics of migrants also differ between states. Important findings emerging from this study are as follows. 1) Singles are more migratory than marrieds where singles are more likely to be males than females. 2) Similarly married females are greater migrants than married males. 3) However, these differences by sex are much less marked in Kerala than in Bihar and West Bengal. Married migrants tend to migrate alone rather than with their family in Bihar and West Bengal, while in Kerala family migration is more common than individual migration.

"This paper evaluates statistically and displays cartographically previously untabulated and unpublished data from the 1971 Census of India for the entire population of Delhi. Data pertain to Delhi's census 'charges' (wards) and were originally tabulated in the form of 348 variables relating to occupational distribution, migration, and non-worker status--each classified separately by gender. Although these data are subject to multiple reporting errors and fallacious ecological inferences, they constitute the largest database yet assembled for comparative analysis of Indian intra-metropolitan patterns and structures. Socio-demographic patterns and areas are identified reflecting the traditional-modern, formal-informal, familistic, and ethnic constituents of the national capital of India.", (excerpt)

"This paper attempts to analyse life-time as well as period migration data in India, derived from 1971 census, through conventional techniques as well as by the log-linear modelling." The differences between lifetime and period migration flows are analyzed., (excerpt)

"In this paper an attempt has been made to assess the pattern of social mobilization, and also to identify the heterogeneity profile of the different states of the Indian union." Interstate migration flows are analyzed, and open or hospitable states are compared with insular ones in terms of net migration hospitality ratios. Findings indicate that geographical and cultural proximity of states encourages migration and thus integration. Data are from the 1961 and 1971 national censuses., (excerpt)

This paper attempts to specify the nature of the marriage curves in India by calculating the moments of the age distribution of marriage. The basic data used in this analysis are the age-sex specific proportions single in the census of India, 1971. There are sharp regional variations in nuptiality. Marriage curves for both males and females are positively skewed, the skewness being substantially higher for females. Further, the curves are sharply peaked, more so in females than in males.

The author examines the fertility behavior of the urban poor in India. "On the basis of data from 180 slum households in Calcutta, India, the paper indicates that in a situation where material and social conditions are comparable, cultural and demographic variables play a major role in influencing reproductive behavior. In this case study, caste and family type are shown to have a significant effect on the numbers of surviving children. As regards child spacing, the woman's age is of paramount importance.", (excerpt)

"This paper is aimed to address mainly the following three aspects of spatial mobility within India during the last inter-censal decade of 1971-1981: (i) Levels of inmigration, outmigration and net migration in the major states (ii) estimates of state-to-state migration flows and (iii) some insights on the socio-economic determinants of internal migration.", (excerpt)

This paper analyzes the impact of various factors on variations in the rate of natural increase of population in Western Maharashtra, India. By using district level data, coefficients of correlation have been calculated between the rate of natural increase, the birth rate and the death rate on the 1 hand and different factors affecting them on the other. The analysis shows that in Western Maharashtra the birth rate is high in response to the high death rate and the high infant mortality rate. It is also revealed that the rate of natural increase of the population declines with an increase in the proportion of working females as well as the proportion of educated males. All this signifies that the region under study is in the 2nd stage of the "demographic transition."

This paper questions the frequently posed thesis of India being overurbanized. The diverse connotations of the term "overurbanization" have been taken into account and tested against the Indian reality. It is concluded that on a net balance of positive and negative effects emanating from urbanization, there is no reason to believe that India is urbanized to an extravagant degree. Any continued adherence to the "overurbanization" thesis is likely to distort our perceptions about the vital role which Indian urbanization is playing in economic growth.

"This paper presents some modifications [of] the usual life table technique to analyse the data on the time of first birth and inter live birth intervals which are compiled from the birth histories of females, of varying marital durations, enumerated in a retrospective survey." The fact that a female may not be exposed to the risk of conception following childbirth or marriage, because of postpartum amenorrhea or of customs involving visits to parents, is taken into account. A method to obtain maximum likelihood estimates of the conditional risk of conception is given, and an analysis of birth intervals is presented using this technique and data for India from the Rural Development and Population Growth--A Sample Survey 1978., (excerpt)

"In this paper an attempt has been made to estimate return migration from the destination state of migrants for 15 major Indian states during 1961-71 among the life-time inter-state migrants enumerated in the 1961 census. The model used for estimation is based on the procedure suggested by Zachariah (1967) for estimating return migration from two census data." The results indicate that of the almost 13 million interstate migrants enumerated in the 1961 census, about 4.7 million returned during the period 1961-1971. Factors affecting this return migration are considered., (excerpt)

"This paper examines two hypotheses formulated by Ravenstein relating to migration and distance: namely, that the volume of migration tends to decrease with the increase in distance and that at shorter distances females are more migratory than males, but at longer distances males are more migratory than females. Based on [Indian] census data, the author seeks to discuss these two issues with regard to rural to city migration in Kerala and West Bengal in a comparative manner. In the main, it is suggested that Ravenstein's formulations hold good in the present case.", (excerpt)

This paper analyzes the relationship between the adoption of female sterilization and 3 social and modernization variables (education, income, and family type) and 2 demographic variables (number of living children and years of marriage) for a sample of 200. The influence of each of these 5 variables on female sterilization is studied by the percentage distribution method and the variance test. The data are analyzed by using the urban-rural and adopter-nonadopter classification. Results show that the social and modernization variables do not seem to influence the adoption of female sterilization among urban or rural households, but the demographic variables--number of living children and years of marriage--do seem to have a clear influence. Among rural households there are differences in these variables between adopters and nonadopters of female sterilization. There is a policy implication here: the government has to advocate the 2 child norm to all eligible couples in the early years of marriage and advise them to adopt sterilization after the birth of the 2nd child. This will go a long way in achieving the national target of the replacement level of reproduction by the year 2000.

"This paper deals with derivation of models to describe the number of births to women during interval (O,T) of length T, when the start of the observation is marriage as well as when it is a distant point after marriage. These models are extensions of the models of Singh, et al., (1973) and of Sheps and Menken (1973) and can suitably be applied to data for short periods of observation as the parameters are assumed to be homogeneous in time. The methods to obtain maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters are outlined." The models are applied to data from a sample survey on rural development and population growth carried out by the Demographic Research Centre of Banaras Hindu University in 1978 in order to examine trends in fecundability and sterility by age of women., (excerpt)

"This paper attempts to review briefly the past and the prospective changes in the sex-age composition of the population of India and to speculate about their socio-economic implications. The basic data are drawn from the decennial censuses and the Sample Registration System; but the discussion extends beyond them.", (excerpt)

"The present paper aims to find out the influence of birth order and maternal age on sex ratio at birth in Greater Bombay [India] by considering 1.5 million births during the period 1970-78. The relationship sex ratio at birth has [with] birth order and maternal age follows a quadratic model." The percentage variation explained by a linear model is less than that explained by the quadratic model., (excerpt)

"In the present paper some socio-economic determinants of female nuptiality in India have been discussed. An integrated path analysis approach is adopted to ascertain the direct, indirect and joint effect of the socio-economic factors on the age at marriage of females in rural and urban areas of various states of India. From the analysis, it became evident that effective literacy is the most dominant factor influencing the age at marriage of the females. Poverty is also a contributing factor in preventing a rise in the age at marriage.", (excerpt)

This paper develops probability distributions to describe the variations in the number of live birth-conceptions to a female during a given time interval (0, To) of length To. In the derivation, the interval (0, To) is divided into 2 consecutive segments, and fertility parameters within each segment are assumed to be constant but may differ between the segments. A method of obtaining maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters is outlined. The models are applied to an observed set of data. An application of the models in the evaluation of family planning programs is illustrated.

"This paper reports menarcheal age in a sample of 300 Andhra [India] girls with a view to contribute to the study of secular trend, and attempts to analyse the relationship of menarche to economic status of the family, diet (in broad terms), sibship size and birth order.", (excerpt)

"There is an assumption that family planning leads to less infant mortality, and [that a] lower rate of infant mortality will lead toward the evolution of small family. The present paper, based on the data collected from 472 eligible couples from a suburban area of West Bengal, does not reveal any such strong relation between family planning and infant mortality. The data have also been examined in the perspective of familial economic status and formal educational standard of the mothers concerned.", (excerpt)

"This paper is concerned with the issue of delimiting population [regions] in India on the basis of selected and basic population variables." Types of regions are defined in two ways: by measuring 16 population variables at the district level and by measuring selected blocks of variables at the state/union territory level. "A defined method of score assessment has been employed which displays characteristic and clear grouping of districts in each [case]." Data are from the 1971 census., (excerpt)

This paper is a report on the first (serological) phase of a study organized by WHO in collaboration with the WHO International Reference Centre for Respiratory Virus Diseases other than Influenza in Bethesda, Md., USA, to define the viral etiology of severe respiratory infections in children, particularly in tropical areas. Paired sera from 528 children up to 5 years old admitted to hospital with severe respiratory illness of probable viral etiology were collected in 10 countries and sent frozen to the International Reference Centre, where standard complement-fixation tests were made for the following agents: parainfluenza virus types 1, 2 and 3, influenza virus types A and B, adenoviruses, respiratory syncytial virus, Mycoplasma pneumoniae, Coxiella burneti and psittacosis-ornithosis.Some 41% of paired sera showed rising antibody titres for one or more of these agents, multiple infections being observed in 8%. In most of the countries the pattern of infection was similar. RS virus was the most important respiratory tract pathogen of early life, particularly in the first year of life and in cases of bronchiolitis and pneumonia; the parainfluenza viruses were next in importance, particularly in cases of croup, but, in contra-distinction to RS virus infections, they were commoner in older children. Influenza, adenoviruses, and M. pneumoniae were of moderate importance, and C. burneti and the psittacosis-ornithosis agents were relatively rare. This pattern is similar to that which has been observed in temperate climates.