Effect of Female Literacy on Select Economic and Demographic Variables

Female literacy plays a very important role in the upbringing of any society. The book tries to reveal the trends in literacy, fertility, work participation and infant mortality in India and the selected States. Four states Kerala, Maharashtra, Bihar/Jharkhand are selected for the study. The study explains how female literacy rate affects the fertility, infant mortality and female work participation. Along with female literacy the effect of various other factors like urban population, religions etc. are also studied. Multivariate multiple regression model is used here. Two indices composite economic wealth and medical indices are developed and used as factors in the study. Principal Composite Analysis and Composite index method are used to create these indices. Further the direct and indirect effect of female literacy on all the three variables is estimated using path analysis. Statistical package like SPSS (Ver. 19) and AMOS (Ver. 18) are been used for analyzing the data.The study has pointed out that the effect of female literacy on the variables varies in the selected states. Demographers, Statisticians and researchers from social sciences will find this study very interesting.