Inability to Conceive and its Health Seeking Behaviour in Uttar Pradesh

Parenthood is one of the major transitions in adult life for both men and women. Couples experience stigma, sense of loss, and diminished self-esteem in the setting of their infertility. Also postponement of childbearing in young generation couples may be one of the reasons of infertility which dramatically increased the number of couples seeking treatment for infertility now-a-days due to more awareness of available services and latest and more successful techniques.
In this study an attempt have been made to estimate infertility indirectly from the information on childlessness and health seeking behaviour in Uttar Pradesh using the DLHS-III survey data collected in 2007-08. Infertility is perceived as a problem across virtually all cultures and societies and has an estimate about 11 percent of females of reproductive age 20-49, whose marital duration is more than two years. Among those respondents who reported problem of lifetime infertility, more than three-fourth suffered from primary infertility. The estimates of childlessness and current primary infertility are 4.1 percent and 2.0 percent respectively. Also percentage of women seeking treatment for lifetime primary and current primary infertility is about 84.0 percent.