Fertility Decline in Punjab, India: Parallels with Historical Europe

Abstract

Two interesting features emerge from this study of fertility behaviour in Punjab. First, it brings out the common features of peasant life and demographic behaviour found in this developing-country setting and in historical Europe. As in much of Europe, marriage was regulated to adjust to the availability of land and other resources. It is interesting to note that the operation of this ‘nuptiality valve’ was quite consistent with a system of joint families and partible inheritance. Secondly, the findings suggest that we need to re-define what we understand to be the features of socio-economic development which are crucial for fertility decline. Fertility began to decline steadily in this part of Punjab as early as 1940, at a time when the society was overwhelmingly agrarian, illiterate, and infant mortality was high with no access to modern contraceptive technology, as in historical Europe. The onset of the decline was brought about by development interventions which stabilized fluctuations in crop yields and mortality, thus radically improving stability of people's expectations. This study also points out the inapplicability of Mamdani's theories of fertility behaviour to the people he studied. The survey data presented in this paper were collected with the help of a grant from the International Development Research Centre, Canada, to the National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi. The support of both these institutions is gratefully acknowledged, as is also the support from a grant by the Mellon Foundation to the Population Studies and Training Center, Brown University, U.S.A., for preparing this paper. This is a revised version of Working Paper 1993-11 of the Population Studies and Training Center, Brown University.