Household Fertility Behaviour and Children's Schooling Amongst Tribals

The dominant fertility research agenda stresses the socio-economic perspective of the effects of socio-economic structural factors on fertility decline. A large number of studies based upon correlation and regression analyses on fertility and on children's educational attainments have been carried out, on a wide variety of the cross-sectional data, from both economic and sociological points of view. An important implication of these theories is the emergence of a hypothesised negative quantity-quality trade-off-which maintains that quantity and quality of children would interact because parents desire approximately equal level of quality for each of their children. However, despite a variety of theoretical and empirical formulations on the subject, household fertility and children's schooling remain perplexing issues. It is , therefore, imperative that micro-demographic studies on the diverse socio-economic cultural groups are undertaken in order to further enrich knowledge in this area. It is with this view that efforts are made in this study to identify the socio-economic factors which influence the household fertility behaviour and household demand for children's education. Attempts have also been made to find out interrelationship, if any, between fertility and children's education in the context of a developing tribal society.

Sumanash Dutta (b.1960) obtained his MA degree in Economics from North Bengal University, West Bengal. He started his academic career as Lecturer in Tripura Engineering College, Tripura. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from University of Roorkee (now IIT, Roorkee) as a full time QIP research scholar. He taught Economics in Tripura University, Tripura as a Reader in the Department of Economics and presently is a member of faculty of Assam University, Silchar. Sumanash Dutta has contributed over twenty research papers and articles in various national and international journals of the discipline. During his long and chequered teaching career spread over two decades, he worked as Officer on Special Duty (OSD) in the Directorate of Higher Education, Government of Tripura and was also Secretary (Administration) of Tripura Board of Joint Entrance Examination for four consecutive years.