PANAJI: The total level of Goa’s fertility (TFR) has decreased by 0.4 children per woman in the last five years, according to the 2019-20 National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5).
TFR reached 1.3 children per woman as against 1.7 before.
Gynecologist Dr.
Govind Kamat told TOI that “fertility rates not only decrease in cave, but throughout the world when people are increasingly entering for planned pregnancies and chooses to have one or two children.” For the same reason, people don’t choose early pregnancy, he said.
“Because this (pregnancy is delayed) they then get complications, which also leads to a decline in fertility,” added Dr.
Kamat.
The survey, which collected information from 1,856 households, 2,030 women in the age group 15-49 and 313 men aged 15-54 years, also stated that the level of cave fertility was far below the “fertility reimbursement rate”.
Replacement level is the number of children needed to replace parents, after accounting for death, leaning sex ratio, infant death, etc.
Below this level, the population began to fall.
In accordance with NFHS-4 2015-16, the total level of cave fertility is 1.7 children per woman, far below the level of replacement of 2.1 child fertility.
“The biggest differential in fertility is by religion and caste / tribe.
At the current fertility rate, Muslim women will have an average of 0.3 less children than Hindu women (TFR 1.2, compared to 1.5) and 0.2 Children are more than Christian women, “said Survey NFHS-5.
In Goa, the NFHS-5 field survey was conducted in both districts starting August 30, 2019, until November 26, 2019, through private entities.
Eighty-five percent of pregnancies in five years ahead of the survey that ended in live birth and the remaining 15% was stopped in fetal waste (abortion, miscarriage, or birth to death).
Miscarriage is the most frequently reported type of fetus, accounting for 11% of all pregnancies, abortion contributes 5%, said NFHS-5.
In accordance with the latest surveys, the average age at the first marriage was 24.2 years among women in the age group 25-49 years, with 10% in the age group 20-24 years after marriage before the minimum age of legal 18.
This image slightly dropped from 12% in previous surveys.
Eight percent of men in the age group 25-29 years married before the minimum age of 21, rose slightly from 7% in previous surveys, NFHS-5 stated.
The survey also revealed that the median interval between birth in five years before the survey in Goa was 39.3 months, two months shorter than the previous survey.
Seven percent of birth took place within 18 months after the last birth and 20% occur within 24 months.
Nearly half (45%) birth occurred in three years since the previous birth.
“Research shows that waiting at least three years between children reduce the risk of infant mortality,” said the survey.