Nuptiality and Fertility Questions and Answers

Answer: A

The key accepts both statements as true with (R) as the explanation: unintended pregnancy is lower among young women in this key, where a more equitable gender role of young women is taken to give them more control over their reproductive decisions. So the first option is the keyed answer.

Answer: B

Replacement level fertility is measured by the net reproduction rate, the answer in the key. When the net reproduction rate is one, each woman is replaced by one daughter in the next generation, so the population just replaces itself.

The total fertility rate of about 2.1 is the equivalent figure in terms of children, but it is the NRR that measures the replacement directly. The gross reproduction rate ignores mortality and the crude birth rate is a general measure.

Answer: D

The correct matches are the index of overall fertility with the ratio of actual births to births at the standard rates, the index of marital fertility with the second fraction using married women, the index of fertility of non-married women with the first fraction using unmarried women and the index of the proportion of married women with the ratio of married standard births to total standard births. This is the code iii iv i ii, as in Coale's indices.

The other codes mix up the indices, for example by giving the overall index to the fraction that has only unmarried women.

Answer: C

The Threshold Hypothesis in fertility was proposed by the United Nations. In its study of 1965 it said that fertility starts to fall only after a country has reached a certain level of social and economic development, the threshold, such as in literacy, urbanisation and income.

Becker developed the economics of the family, Dumont the theory of social capillarity, and Caldwell the wealth flows theory, so none of them proposed the threshold hypothesis.

Answer: B

Leibenstein viewed that children have utilitarian value. In his theory of the demand for children he spoke of the utility of a child as a source of income, as security in old age and as a source of satisfaction, set against the cost of bringing the child up.

Caldwell wrote on wealth flows, Becker on the quantity and quality of children, and Judith Blake on social norms, so the key credits Leibenstein with the idea of utility.

Answer: B

The Hajnal method of estimating the singulate mean age at marriage assumes that marriage has remained constant in the past. The method uses the proportions of single people at each age from a census, and it works on the assumption that the pattern of marriage has not changed, so the proportion single at each age represents a stable marriage pattern.

The assumptions of constant fertility or mortality belong to the stable population method and not to Hajnal's technique.

Answer: C

The IUCD is not a natural contraceptive method. It is a device placed in the womb by a trained health worker and it works by a physical and chemical effect on the uterus, so it counts as a modern method.

Coitus interruptus, celibacy and periodic abstinence are natural methods, since they need no device or drug and depend only on the behaviour of the couple.

Answer: D

The assertion is false and the reason is true, which is the key. Most of the North Indian States, such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, have not reached the replacement level of fertility, while the southern States and a few others have.

It is true that population growth has been slow to decline in the northern States, so the reason holds as a statement. The options that find the assertion true are therefore rejected.

Answer: A

The assertion is correct and the reason is not the correct explanation of the assertion. In India fertility has been declining since the late seventies, and that is true.

The fall in infant mortality over the same period is true too, but it was a parallel trend. Fertility fell mainly because of the spread of family planning, education and changes in social attitudes, so the reason is not given as the main explanation. This is the first option.

Answer: D

The denominator of the general marital fertility rate is married women in the age group 15 to 49 years. The rate is the number of births per thousand married women of those ages, since only married women are taken as exposed to the risk of marital births.

Unmarried women, all women and the whole population in the age group are the denominators of other rates, so the fourth option is right.