IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ash/wpaper/115.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Effect of COVID-19 on Fertility in India: Evidence from the National Family Health Survey

Author

Listed:
  • Gby Atee

    (Ashoka University)

  • Aparajita Dasgupta

    (Ashoka University)

  • Sneha Lamba

    (Ashoka University)

Abstract

How fertility responds to the changes in the disease environment is an important question for understanding population dynamics. We investigate this question in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in India. We leverage the intensity of the nationwide mobility restrictions in difference-in-differences and event study frameworks to estimate the impact of the pandemic on fertility in the country. To do this, we harmonise district-wise data on lockdown intensity with birth histories from the latest round of the National Family Health Survey 2019-2021 (NFHS-5). We find a 0.2 percentage point increase in the probability of births in the post-COVID period compared to the pre-COVID period — the effect starts at nine months after the first lockdown in India and tapers off ten months later. Strikingly, the rise in fertility is most prominent in states with higher fertility rates at the baseline and in districts which are likely to have high reverse migration during COVID. We also find that the increase in fertility occurred for the higher order births. In contrast, we find a decline in the probability of first order births in districts with most restrictions on mobility. We explore potential mechanisms and find a significant decrease in the use of modern contraceptives in the post-COVID period, which aligns with our main finding. Our results have important implications for understanding fertility behaviour and human capital investments in the face of shocks.

Suggested Citation

  • Gby Atee & Aparajita Dasgupta & Sneha Lamba, 2024. "The Effect of COVID-19 on Fertility in India: Evidence from the National Family Health Survey," Working Papers 115, Ashoka University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ash:wpaper:115
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://dp.ashoka.edu.in/ash/wpaper/paper115_0.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    COVID-19;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ash:wpaper:115. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ashoka University (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.ashoka.edu.in .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.