Nuptiality and Fertility Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The official key names the child-woman ratio as the measure Rele used for his fertility estimates.

The child-woman ratio, the number of young children for every 1,000 women of childbearing age, is a census-based measure of fertility that needs no birth registration, which suited India. Rele used it in his work on estimating fertility from census data with stable population ideas.

The P/F ratio method is the work of William Brass, as the matching question on this paper shows. The reverse survival method and the parity ratio methods are other indirect techniques and are not the ones linked with Rele in the key.

Answer: C

The mean length of generation is affected by overall fertility and mortality levels and by how fertility is spread over the age-specific rates.

The mean length of a generation is the average age of mothers at the birth of their daughters. It is worked out from the age-specific fertility rates weighted by the survival of the daughters, so it depends on the level of fertility and mortality, and on the share of fertility that falls in each age group.

The first option names only fertility and the reproductive span, leaving out mortality. The second names the gross reproduction rate, which is a summary and not a determinant. The fourth names the age at marriage, which affects the timing but is not the factor that determines the mean length of generation.

Answer: D

Foetal mortality from involuntary causes is not an intercourse variable.

Davis and Blake grouped eleven intermediate variables into three sets. The intercourse variables concern the formation and breaking of sexual unions and the frequency of intercourse. The conception variables concern fecundity and contraception. The gestation variables concern whether a conceived pregnancy goes to birth, and they include foetal mortality from voluntary and from involuntary causes.

The age of entry into sexual union, permanent celibacy, and the breaking of unions by divorce, separation or desertion all belong to the intercourse set. So foetal mortality is the one that falls in the gestation set.

Answer: B

The number of children an average woman could bear in her reproductive span is fecundity.

Fecundity is the physiological capacity to reproduce, whereas fertility is the actual number of births. The question asks for what a woman can bear and not for what she does bear, so the term is fecundity.

Fertility is wrong because it records actual births. The real birth rate is not a standard term for this idea. The crude death rate measures deaths, so it has nothing to do with the number of children a woman could bear.

Answer: C

With a sex ratio at birth of 1.05, the gross reproduction rate is the total fertility rate times 1.00 divided by 2.05.

The gross reproduction rate counts only daughters, so it is the TFR multiplied by the share of girl births. If there are 1.05 boys for each girl, the share of girls among all births is

\[ \frac{1.00}{1.00 + 1.05} = \frac{1.00}{2.05} \]

Hence

\[ \mathrm{GRR} = \frac{1.00\ \mathrm{TFR}}{2.05} \]

The first option divides by 1.05, which would give the ratio of girls to boys and not the share of girls. The second and fourth options put TFR in the denominator, which would make GRR fall as fertility rises, so they cannot be right.

Answer: A

Both statements are true and the reason explains the assertion.

Fertility fell earlier and faster in the Southern States, such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu, than in the Northern States, where it is still high. That is a well-known feature of India's demographic transition, so (A) is true.

(R) names the higher empowerment of women in the South, with greater female literacy, later marriage and more say in family decisions, as the cause. That is the standard explanation, so it is correct. The second option would say the reason is not the explanation, and the third and fourth options call a true statement false.

Answer: A

The official key takes both statements as true, with (R) as the explanation of (A).

(A) says fertility is declining among those who do not use contraception. Fertility can fall without contraceptives, through later marriage, longer breastfeeding and abstinence, which is what is meant here.

(R) names the better empowerment of women, which brings later marriage and greater say in childbearing, as the cause. The key accepts it as the explanation. The second option denies that explanation and the third and fourth call a statement false.

Answer: C

The phrase 'intermediate variables affecting fertility' was coined by Kingsley Davis and Judith Blake in their 1956 paper on social structure and fertility. They listed the variables, such as those governing exposure to intercourse, conception and gestation, through which all social and economic causes must act on birth rates.

Bongaarts later reduced these to a smaller set of proximate determinants and Hajnal worked on marriage patterns, while Caldwell is known for his wealth flows theory. None of them coined the phrase.

Answer: D

The net reproduction rate is the per-generation growth rate when current age-specific fertility and mortality continue and there is no net migration. It is the average number of daughters a newborn girl will bear during her life, allowing for the chance she dies before the end of the childbearing years, so a value of one means the generation just replaces itself.

An annual excess of births over deaths is the rate of natural increase, a decennial growth rate is a different measure again, and the annual rate at which women replace themselves describes a yearly rate when the NRR is a per-generation one.

Answer: C

The key is that period and cohort birth rates may differ greatly when the mean age at marriage is decreasing. When women marry earlier, births that would have come later in the calendar are brought forward, which pushes the period rate up for the time being while the completed cohort fertility is unchanged.

When couples plan their fertility steadily, the timing is stable and the two measures stay close. An increase in the mean age at marriage also changes the timing, but the key accepts only the falling age, and 'None of the above' is therefore wrong.