Rajasthan: Two kids ideal for 70% women, finds survey

JAIPUR: About 70% of women and 71% of men in the age group of 15-49 years think that the ideal number of children one should have is two. This was revealed by National Family Health Survey (NFHS) report.
Over the past 10 years, it has increased from 51.4% to 70.3% for females and from 55.5% to 71% for men in the state.

Besides, there are 65.6% of women (15 to 24 years age) who said that they wanted no more child after two kids, while in the same age group, 60.8% males think the same, shows the survey.

About 87.2% of females and 85.2% of males in urban areas and 82% females and 82.7% of males in rural areas having two children desire not to have any more child.

Among those women who do not have any child, there were 81.9% of them who think that two is the ideal number of children they should have. It reduced to 80.5% among women who have one child but it increased to 86.2% of women who already have two children and they think that two is the ideal number of children.

The proportion of those wanting a daughter has risen from the 2005-06 NFHS survey in which 81.5% of women and 75.3% of men had said that they wanted one. But, in 2015-16, there were 86.6% females wanted one daughter while percentage of such males has increased to 87.9%.

However, among Hindus, the percentage of women who want at least one daughter is 86.5, 89.1 for Muslims, 81.9 for Sikhs and 79.9 for other women.

Besides, percentage of Hindu women who want at least one son is 89.2, 91.4 for Muslims, 86.6 for Sikhs and 81 for others.

Surprisingly, in rural areas, there were 87.7% of women and in urban areas 83.6% of women population want at least one daughter. There were 85.7% of women population in urban areas and 90.5% in rural areas want at least one son.