WATERING THE NEIGHBOUR'S GARDEN: THE GROWING - CICRED

FACTORS INFLUENCING THE USE OF PRENATAL DIAGNOSTIC TECHNIQUES …
independent effects of key socioeconomic variables on the use of
PNDT. Accordingly, Table 6 shows the results of logistic regression of
the determinants of PNDT use. As the table shows, most of the variables
used in the regression have significant, independent effects on
the use of PNDT. The use of PNDT increases with maternal as well as
paternal age. But the use of this technology is lower if the order of
birth is three or more. It is particularly low if the mother already has
given birth to a son.
Urban residence, educational level, exposure to media and standard
of living show strong, independent and positive effects on the use
of PNDT. Its use is higher among Christians, and if the religion is
other than Hindu, Muslim or Sikh. The use is lower among members
of scheduled tribes and scheduled castes, even after controlling for
standard of living and educational level. When compared with nonworkers,
the use is lower among mothers who work but not for wage.
The use of PNDT is lower among mothers having larger ideal family
sizes and among those who gave non-numeric answer to the question
on ideal family size. Women who were visited by health workers during
the pregnancy report lower use of PNDT. This finding is directly in
contradiction with the claim of some activists that public health workers
act as conduits of this technology in rural areas. Even after controlling
these variables, eastern, north-central and north-western parts of
India show lower use of PNDT than southern states. In other words,
the geographical pattern seen in the PNDT use cannot fully be explained
by the observed socioeconomic variations. This indicates the
influence of neighbourhood on the use of technology.
3.2. Determinants of Sex ratio at Birth
In recent years the use of PNDT has emerged as the key intervening
variable through which other factors influence the SRB in India.
There are, however, a number of factors that independently affect the
SRB. Teitelbaum (1972) provides an early review of the literature on
this subject. James (1987) and Waldren (1998) provide a more recent
review of the literature. Chahnazarian (1988) has applied multivariate
techniques to test the independent effects of some of these variables
using vital statistics data for several countries. For India, Retherford
and Roy (2003) have used the NFHS data to test the significance of a
limited set of factors. Here, using the same data set, an attempt is made
to test the significance of far more variables on the SRB.
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