Household Access to Actual Food Intake and Fertility Level of Muslim Population: A Study from Rural West Bengal

Abstract

AbstractAccess to food is determined by socioeconomic conditions, food prices, and the purchasing power of households to buy enough food or actual food intake. The phenomenon of hunger is very much region- or context-specific. India remains in the ‘severe’ category in the Global Hunger Index Severity Scale, 2017. Noticing the importance of food for surviving in this article, initiative has been taken to analyze the impacts of the access of food and actual food intake on the fertility level of Muslims in rural West Bengal. The study was based on both secondary and primary data covering 600 households, also intending to examine food access of the households classified by their socioeconomic condition among the married Muslim population. The present study is conducted on selected Community Development (CD) blocks of West Bengal using a multi-stage random sampling technique. After detailed study, a negative relation was found between actual food intake of married Muslim women and the fertility level of the Muslims in rural West Bengal. It was further observed that Muslim women are deprived in terms of the consumption of food compared to Muslim men because of male supremacy and low access to food mainly because of their poor socioeconomic conditions.KeywordsFertility rateMuslimFood consumptionProtein consumptionGender disparity