Women's Empowerment and Response towards Family Planning: Empirical Evidence from Bankura District, West Bengal

This study examines the association between empowerment and family planning attitudes of the rural women in Bankura district, West Bengal. We have indexed women's empowerment at household level as well as at community level applying Principal Component Analysis. The measure of household level empowerment includes twenty seven indicators while community level empowerment includes twenty six indicators, each covering five dimensions. As the decision towards family planning is a dichotomous variable a binary probit regression model has been formulated to estimate the probability of taking family planning measure. This empirical study is based on a set of 580 household level data collected from Bankura district. We have found that women's empowerment at household level and at community level have positive and significant impact on family planning decision. Besides, women's education, off-farm occupation, household income, dependency ratio and participation in self-help group are important factors affecting decision towards family planning.