Family Size, Outcomes for Children, and Gender-Case of Rural Maharashtra

This article explores the linkages between family size and such out comes for children as educational attainment, work, and future expectations, in rural Maharashtra, using sample survey data for currently married women aged 25-44 in 1983- 84. The results suggest that while the most important determinants are parental education and economic status, family size has a consistent effect on the situation of children and their gender roles in particular. The situation of daughters in small families continues to be unchanged and in some ways worse: They are no more likely to be educated than those in large families and with the shrinking labour supply of sons, shortfalls are taken up by daughters, and especially older daughters, who, at the cost of securing an education, now spend considerably more time than both girls in large families and their brothers in small families in working in non-domestic activities.