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The Indian reproductive and child health programme is to support couples to avoid unwanted pregnancies and to have the number of children they want, when they want them. In this paper an attempt was made to investigate the concordance between chilbearing intention and fertility behavior and to explore the factors affecting chilbearing intention by comparing the data from the National Family Health Survey-2 (1998-1999) with the John Hopkins University follow-up survey (2002-2003) in two states of rural North India. From The prospective assessment during the inter-survey period it was found that 44.3 percent pregnancies were unintended, comprising of 32.2 percent unwanted and 12.1 percent mistimed. Life course experiences, such as, educational-level, exposure to mass media, working-status, healthcare utilization were found to negate the desire to have additional child. During the inter-survey period, younger womwn faced higher risk of incidence of mistimed pregnancy, while older womwn had more unwanted pregnancy. |
