NFHS survey out: Dip in women owning property

Context: While the percentage of women who had a house or land registered in their name in 2015-16 was around 35%, it dipped to 22.7% in 2020-21. But NFHS doesn’t reveal women owners as a percentage of total land/house owners. So, the experts warned relying upon NFHS data for land ownership.
Is the NFHS-5 data reliable?

• NFHS doesn’t reveal women owners as a percentage of total land/house owners. So, the experts warned relying upon NFHS data for land ownership.
• A 2020 University of Manchester working paper examined other Indian surveys and found barely 16% of women in rural landowning households own land. Women constitute only 14% of all landowners, owning just 11% of the land.

What are the government steps to improve land ownership among women?

• Hindu Succession Act: The 2005 amendment to the Act gave daughters equal coparcenary rights in the undivided joint family property.
• Official schemes for homeless/landless offering property titles predominantly to women.
• Many states are lowering stamp duties for women to reduce gender gaps in property registration.

What needs to be done?

• Kerala, which implemented the HSA amendments decades before 2005 reported only 27.3% of women claiming property ownership in NFHS against 55% in Bihar. So, India has to fix the data gaps to better reveal gender gaps.

Other spheres of Women Growth and Development
Prevalence of Child Marriage: The share of women aged 20-24 who married before turning 18 has declined from 27% to 23% in the last five years. Child marriage is a key determinant of high fertility, poor maternal and child health, and lower social status of women.

• West Bengal and Bihar, with around 41% such women each, had the highest prevalence of girl child marriage.
• The maximum reduction in the proportion of underage marriages was observed in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Haryana.

Rampant Anaemia: As many as 57% women aged 15-49 were anaemic in 2019-21, compared to 53% in 2015-16, while the same for men rose from 22.7% to 25%. The most formidable increase—8.5% was observed for children aged 6-59 months (67.1%).

• Among larger states, West Bengal and Kerala reported the highest and lowest prevalence, respectively, of anaemic women.
• Child anaemia rates worsened the most in Assam, Mizoram, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha.

Improving Amenities: All states, except Manipur, Meghalaya, Assam and Jharkhand, had over 90% population with access to improved drinking water sources.

• Bihar, Jharkhand etc states had almost doubled the access since 2015-16, but most fell below the 75% mark.

Women who own House: The number of women who own a house or land in Delhi, either alone or jointly, has significantly dipped over the past five years. While the percentage of women who had a house or land registered in their name in 2015-16 was around 35%, it dipped to 22.7% in 2020-21.

• Women who have a Bank Account: It has gone up 8% and women who have a mobile phone that they use is up by 7%.
• Access to Internet: The percentage of women who have ever used the internet was around 64% as compared to 85% men. This data was not available in the previous survey.
• Participation in the Household Participation: It has gone up from around 74% in 2015-16 to 92% now. The participation of married women in household decisions includes health care for self, making major household purchases, and visits to her family or relatives, etc.
• Out-of-Pocket Expenditure: Average out-of-pocket expenditure has seen a significant improvement in the per delivery in a public health facility.
• Rise in Obesity: Obesity among both men and women has risen. While 41.3% of women are now overweight or obese, this figure is 38% for men. The rise in the percentage of men who are overweight or obese, however, has been faster in men than in women.

About NFHS survey

• NFHS is a large-scale, multi-round survey conducted in a representative sample of households throughout India.
• All NFHSs have been conducted under the stewardship of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, with the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) Mumbai, serving as the nodal agency.
• NFHS-5 includes some new focal areas, such as death registration, pre-school education, expanded domains of child immunisation, components of micro-nutrients to children, menstrual hygiene, expanded age ranges for measuring hypertension and diabetes among all aged 15 years and above, which will give requisite input for strengthening existing programmes and evolving new strategies for policy intervention.

Every National Family Health Survey (NFHS) has two specific goals to fulfill.

• To provide essential data needed by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and other agencies for informed decision making and policy and programme intervention purposes.
• To provide insight regarding important emerging health and family welfare issues.