AN APPLICATION OF LIFE TABLE AND SURVIVAL MODEL TO STUDY THE REPRODUCTIVE SPAN

Abstract

Female’s reproductive span is an important issue in understanding not only the fertility levels of a society but also a female’s or couple’s reproductive planning. In Indian context reproductive span is measured starting from marriage of a female to sterility of male/female or menopausal state of female. In the past several studies shown that marriage to first birth i.e. first birth interval plays a significant role in the study of fertility. So here we proposed that reproductive span should be considered between first birth and last birth to interview in order to study it significantly. Therefore, here we have considered two approaches for comparison of the duration of reproductive span using the NFHS-3 data i.e. duration between first marriage and last birth to interview (traditional method) and duration between first birth and last birth to interview (Proposed method) for the females either sterile (male/female sterilization) or menopausal or their open birth interval is greater than equal to 5 yrs for ever-married women aged 15–49 living in Uttar Pradesh. Aim of this study is to observe the median duration of reproductive span according to some socio demographic characteristics comparing these two different approaches and also to observe the factors affecting the female’s reproductive span. Results show that proposed method gives better explanation of reproductive span.