PrimoPDF, Job 2 - PRC

196.6 Children survivingIn order to examine the timing of sterilization, a question on how many livingchildren women had when they accepted the sterilization. Since sterilization is a terminalmethod, which is generally used when a woman has desired family size. The results of thissurvey presented in Table 6 indicate that the mean number of children living per woman atthe time of acceptance of sterilization is 3.4. Only four percent of the women had acceptedthe method when they had two children. Almost two-third of the women (65 percent) optedfor sterilization when they had three children and 31 percent were sterilized when they hadat least 4 living children. The use of sterilization by sex composition of the children shows apreference for sons (Table 6 & Table 7). None of the women without having a son hadaccepted sterilization, while as 6 percent of the women without a daughter had accepted themethod. Similarly, 43 percent of women with one son had accepted the method comparedwith 27 percent of women with one daughter. However, mean number of sons surviving is1.6 and mean number of daughters surviving per accepter is 1.7. Thus the study shows thatwomen generally do not go for sterilization unless they have at least one surviving son.Table 6Distribution of the respondents by number of living children at the time of acceptance ofsterilization._________________________________________________________________________No. of Living Children Male % Female % Total %_________________________________________________________________________0 00 -- 03 05.9 00. --1 22 43.2 14 27.4 00. --2 27 52.9 26 51.0 02 03.93 02 03.9 08 15.7 33 64.74 00 -- 00 -- 11 21.65 00 -- 00 -- 05 09.8Mean 1.6 100.0 1.76 100.0 3.37 100.0