Content area
Full text
Abstract Pakistanis has targeted to achieve replacement level of fertility that is 2.1 births by the end of 2025 (national population policy, 2010). But this target cannot be attained without knowledge of factors which affect family size. The empirical study is devised to investigate the contribution of various socioeconomic, demographical and attitudinal factors which force couple to have more than two children. Complementary log-log Regression Model has been used to identify factors affecting the family size. It is found from Multivariate Analyses that women's age, husband's education, women currently not working, lack of consensus between husband and wife on number of children, son preference, high fertility intention, contraceptive knowledge, contraceptive use and child mortality are responsible for big family size (more than two children).
Keywords Logistic regression, Logit link, Complementary log-log regression, Replacement level of fertility, Odds ratio, PDHS (Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey), CEB (Children Ever Born to Women).
1. Introduction and Literature Review Pakistan like many other developing countries is facing the problem of alarming population. Pakistan is at the early stage of transition from the past two decades (Ali and Buriro, 2008).
Mortality rate has turned down rapidly but decline in fertility is sluggish.
Increase in adolescent population and reduction in dependency ratio exhibit that phase of population transition has got started. The average of more than six children per women has begun to turn down in late 1980's (Arnold and Sultan, 1992; Feeney and Alam, 2003). Rapid population created great hindrance to social and economic progress of country. Realizing the adverse consequences of rapid population growth, A Population Welfare Programme was first launched in early 1960's. But Pakistan is still far away from success. Average number of children ever born has declined to 3.87 according to PDHS 2006-07 which was 4.1 (as cited in Hashmi and Zafar, 1997) in 1990-91 PDHS. Currently Government is facing the severe shortage of resources in energy sector (gas, electricity) which cause load shedding. Most part of resources is consumed to fulfill the requirements of increased population and less is utilized for productivity purpose.
Shortage of food grains has also risen to its crucial level. Siddiqui (1985) had pointed out that agriculture production has decreased even in those areas where it was in abundance in the...