Govt aid for pregnant women fuels population growth

In an unintended consequence, a centrally funded safe motherhood scheme now adds to India’s population burden as women prefer to bear multiple children because of the Rs 1,400 cash incentive associated with the programme.

Women in several states found the government offer of Rs 1,400 under the Janani Suraksha Yojna (JSY) for institutional delivery too irresistible to avoid, public health researchers found after analysing two rounds of district-level health survey data.

The JSY scheme was introduced in 2005 to reduce maternal mortality and improve institutional delivery. But the district-level household surveys in 2002-04 and 2007-08 demonstratedthe lure of money, rather than better care, as the driving reason behind a spike in child birth in hospitals and government facilities among a large section of women.

“In essence, women decided to have more children as a result of the JSY cash incentive, independent of any improvements in delivery care,” Arindam Nandi, a fellow at the Centre for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy at Washington told Deccan Herald.

As a result, the population of newborns is increasing by 7-12 per cent over a three-year period in at least 10 states going against the national population control objectives, found Nandi and his colleague Ramanan Laxminarayan at the Public Health Foundation of India.

The 10 states include Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Rajasthan, and Orissa.

During 2007–2008, the average monthly per capita expenditure among rural Indian families was Rs 649, and among the poorest 10 per cent of families, it was less than Rs 400.

In comparison, the maximum possible JSY benefit of Rs 1,400 is indeed large, the duo argued in a research paper published in the latest issue of the Journal of Population Economics.