Economic Stability Linkage with Adolescent Girls: Analytical Issues and Empirical Evidence from India

Abstract

This study is an attempt to analyse the changes in adolescent girls in India which is effected by of some selected variables related to demographic and socioeconomic predictors. This is based on recent house hold surveys which include National Family Health Surveys (NFHS), Census Surveys, various Planning Commission reports and National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) reports. The improvement achieved by India is fully accounted for by a wide range of variables, including sex ratio, literacy, mean age at marriages, usage of modern contraceptive methods. The plan outlays on family welfare programmes and its percentage share in total plan outlays has increased from 0.033 percent to 3.036 percent. This has led to a remarkable change in India’s growth performance as well as relatively status for women index in India. The study featured three NFHS and six census groups pertaining to adolescent girls and women and men on the issues of women’s progress in India. The study was also undertaken to see the awareness of adolescent girls regarding health aspects because awareness is one major factor for development of this group of population because of the fact that these adolescent girls would be the future housewives. Thus an informative and educated intervention seems to have a positive effect on awareness levels which would eventually encourage expansion of knowledge and positive health habits. The study applies Relative Status of Women Index to census survey, comparative analysis model to National Family Health Survey data and correlation model for planning commission data. The results show positively for women’s well being. Results revealed that the women empowerment is high and awareness level of different methods of family planning is significantly high. It may be concluded that the adolescent empowerment on socio-economic factor plays a vital role for awareness building on the family planning methods.