Association between Child Preference and Fertility among Muslim Minorities: A Demographic Analysis of Malda District of West Bengal

Fertility is one of the important components of population change and it is a very vital issue of study in developing country like India. The important determinants of fertility are age at marriage, level of education of females, status of women empowerment etc. Beside these factors, child preference plays very vital role in increasing fertility rate. This study has been done based on primary data relating to the child preference and associated fertility behavior. The primary data have been collected by adopting multistage random sampling. The sex ratio has been computed to find out the child preference and chi square test and Pearson’s correlation have been used to find out the results. The study reveals that there is a dominant child preference which affects fertility behavior among Muslim women and wanting a son is one of the important causes of large size family in the study area.