The tempo effect on recent change in rural-urban fertility in West Bengal, India

In West Bengal, India; urban rapid fertility decline started in the late 1980s in urban areas and hence fertility reached at the replacement level in 1989, whereas rural areas achieved that level in 2007, after two decades. In the rest of the state fertility decline began in the 1970s. The principal aim of this paper is to explore the causes of rural-urban gap in fertility levels, and more importantly the tempo and quantum effect on fertility transition by using DHS data and also primary level data. Quantitative methods were applied to assess the tempo and qualitative (FGDs) were adopted to understand the difference. Although fertility has declined substantially in the past two decades in West Bengal, still rural-urban gap in fertility persists within the state. This gap has narrowed down recently but urban fertility has come to a stall for some time at a very low level and rural fertility recently reached replacement level. The structural change in socio-economic conditions in the past two decades perhaps helped to bridge the gap and motivate rural women to adopt small family. The diffusion of ideas of small family and change in aspirations about children from urban to rural area contributed to rapid decline in rural fertility rate.