Selection intensities in menopausal and permanent contraceptor women of a rural population in India

Opportunity for natural selection among the Indian populations

“…the Kigher literacy arnong the socioeconomically developed groups and urban populations. This agrees with earlier evidence on the influence of socioeconomic factors on Crow's indices, and particularly the I, , obtained from small-scale studies among the Indian populations (Verma, 1977;Bharati, 1981;Rao and Murthy, 1984;Rajanikumari et al, 1985); Rajanikumari and Rao, 1986;Reddy et al, 1987). A negative association between economic advancement and prereproductive mortality is also found for Sweden (Hed, 1986) and in several other large-scale studies (Yanakura, 1959;Frisancho et al, 1976;Mitra, 19781, suggesting the universality of this relationship.…”

“…gimilarly, Cruz-Coke et al (1966) observed that the indices among the populations of nomads, villages, and towns in Arica, a small area in Chile, vary in a pattern that one would expect to occur chronologically in the same population. Furthermore, a few smallscale studies in India also suggest the influence of socioeconomic conditions (Bharati, 1981;Rao and Murthy, 1984;Padmanabham, 1985;Rajanikumari et al, 1985;Rajanikumari and Rao, 1986) and of population structural measures (Barua, 1976;Reddy era1 investigators \ ave already pointed out and Lakshmanudu, 1979;Reddy, 1983;Reddy et al, 1987). It is thus clear that the indices of selection measure only the amount of selective opportunity, and existing selection can be better envisaged only if the relevance of sociocultural and structural variability of populations is fully understood.…”