Infertility has been relatively neglected as both a health problem and a subject for social science research in South Asia, as in the developing world more generally. The general thrust of both programmes and research has been on the correlates of high fertility and its regulation rather than on

Demographic literature is replete with observations of an inverse relation between certain attributes of modernity and family size (Thompson 1929; Notestein 1945; Coale and Hoover 1958; Leiberman 1980, Srinivasan 1986).

After Ritter and Hinkelmann, Kirk and his Colleagues Kirk also reported that in matings where the father is in-compatible with the mother with respect to the ABO groups, the children show a higher frequency of the Hp1 gene.