Are Infertility Levels High in India? An Investigation

Infertility in many South-East-Asian countries, has been relatively a neglected field of social science research as these countries still focus on high fertility and its control and not on the dynamics of infertility. Data from various countries have shown that infertility is affecting a large number of couples even in the highly fertile India. On the contrary, this paper shows that the infertility in India is relatively low although the levels have increased over the years. A regional variation in infertility has also been observed wherein the Southern Regions exhibited higher levels of infertility over that of the other. A logistic regression run has shown that the infertility in India is mainly determined by biological and life-style related factors rather than by the socio-economic factors. Infertility also affects the quality and well-being of women’s life adversely by having greater marital instability, higher exposure to domestic violence and by lowered autonomy.