Nuptiality and Fertility Questions and Answers

Answer: D

If the net reproduction rate is less than one, the population is not replacing itself and, in the long run, its growth rate will be negative. Each generation is smaller than the one before, so numbers eventually fall.

In the short run the population can still grow, because momentum from a young age structure keeps births above deaths for some time, so a positive growth in the short run is possible, but the question asks what the condition implies in the long run. The options with a positive growth rate in the long run are wrong, and the short-run negative growth is not implied.

Answer: C

Children are viewed as consumer durables in the economic theory of fertility of Gary Becker, who treated a child as a durable good that gives satisfaction over time, so parents compare cost and benefit. The option 'Bectev' is the printed form of that name in the question.

Leibenstein wrote on the cost and utility of the child, Easterlin on the supply and demand framework, and Caldwell on wealth flows, so none of these three is the author of the view.

Answer: A

The intermediate variables framework in the field of fertility was proposed by Davis and Blake.

In 'Social Structure and Fertility: An Analytic Framework' (1956), Kingsley Davis and Judith Blake grouped the factors that act directly on fertility into eleven intermediate variables, covering intercourse, conception and gestation, through which social and cultural conditions must work.

Bongaarts later reduced these to a smaller set of proximate determinants and measured their effect on fertility. Coale and Hoover wrote on population growth and economic development, and Glass is known for work on British fertility and social mobility.

Answer: D

The child-woman ratio is a measure of fertility.

It is the number of children aged 0 - 4 per thousand women of reproductive age (usually 15 - 49), so it is a fertility measure that can be worked out from a census age distribution alone.

It is not a measure of population growth, migration or mortality, although the number of children counted is influenced slightly by child deaths. It is used where birth registration is incomplete.

Answer: A

The decade synthetic cohort method of computing the mean age at marriage was proposed by S.N. Agarwala.

Agarwala used the proportions single by age in successive censuses, ten years apart, to follow a cohort across a decade, which is the 'decade synthetic cohort' method, in his work on age at marriage in India.

Hajnal's name is attached to the singulate mean age at marriage from a single census. C. Chandrasekaran and J.R. Rele are known for other work in Indian demography, so they are not the proposers of this method.

Answer: D

The proximate determinant of fertility in the list is contraception.

Proximate (or intermediate) determinants are the biological and behavioural factors through which any other influence has to operate: marriage patterns, contraception, induced abortion, breastfeeding and the like.

Caste, social status and religion are socio-cultural background variables. They affect fertility only indirectly, through the proximate determinants, so they are not proximate themselves.

Answer: A

Both statements are correct and the reason explains the assertion, so the answer is A.

Replacement-level fertility means that couples have just enough children to replace themselves. A population which has had high fertility in the past has a young age structure, with many young women yet to bear children, so births stay above deaths for decades. That lag is called population momentum.

B is wrong because R is the cause of A and not an unrelated fact. C and D would make one of the statements false, but both are accepted demographic ideas.

Answer: B

The method that is not natural is the IUD.

Natural methods involve no device or drug: celibacy, coitus interruptus (withdrawal) and periodic abstinence (the rhythm method).

The intrauterine device is a small object inserted in the womb by a trained provider, so it is a modern clinical method of contraception, not a natural one. Celibacy, withdrawal and periodic abstinence all depend only on the behaviour of the couple and need no provider, which is the test the question applies. IUDs also act for years once fitted, unlike the natural methods, which must be practised on each occasion.

Answer: B

The key gives 95 percent as the effectiveness of oral pills when the couple protection rate is computed (option B). In the couple protection rate, each method is converted into couple years of protection by an effectiveness factor, and oral pills are taken as highly effective but not perfect. Sterilisation is counted as fully effective, so 100 percent (option C) belongs to that method and not to the pill. The figures of 50 percent (A) and 90 percent (D) are not the factor the key accepts for oral pills.

Answer: B

The key marks the Feeney method as the one that is not a method of estimating fertility. The reverse survival method estimates past fertility from the numbers of children in a census who have survived, together with life table survival ratios. Rele's method estimates fertility from the child woman ratio, and the own children method matches children to mothers in the same household to build up fertility by age of mother. These three are accepted fertility estimation techniques. The key places the Feeney method outside the list, so the answer is option B.