Female Sterilization in India: Trends, Patterns and Consequences

Female sterilization has been the dominant method of family planning in India since the early 1980s. We use data from various government publications and three rounds of the Indian National Family Health Survey conducted in India in 1992-93, 1998-99 and 2005-06 to examine the trends and patterns in the use of female sterilization in India. We also aim to investigate whether or not there has been any change in the profile of acceptors of female sterilization in India over the last two decades. Furthermore, an attempt will also be made to examine the births averted due to female sterilization in India and in the major states of India. Finally, we will examine the quality of female sterilization services and post-sterilization regret associated with female sterilization. Appropriate bivariate and multivariate techniques will be used to fulfil the objectives of the paper. We propose to use the method suggested by Liu et al. (2008) for estimating the births averted due to female sterilization.