Contraceptive Use and Intentions among Christian and Non-Christian Women in India: A Two-Stage Logit Analysis of Social Identity and Community Effects

Niyati Joshi, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)
C.P. Prakasam, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS),Mumbai,India
Rajiv Ranjan, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)
Nandita Saikia, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

This study compares minority Christians with non-Christians and explore how interactions of religious affiliation and ethnicity produce differences in Contraceptive use/intention through compositional, ideation and socialization hypothesis. Also, displaced population may find difficult to absorb such norms. We develop two-stage logit model for each factor for both groups and apply to Indian National Family Health Survey (1998-99). We select variables Contraceptive Use and Future Intentions, social identity, compositional factors, household education, work status, ethnoreligious composition/ diversity and demographic variables. Models are selected by Brown Screening technique initially and then by standard stepwise procedure, model predictivity is estimated by AIC and compute higher order interactions and select best fit model for both groups. Study suggested that emergent birth limitation is prevalent among Indian Christians and community acts as contraceptives, which increases for women living in educated households. Health/Economic crises do not promote contraception among Christians though son preference matters for non-christians.