This paper aims to explore the nutritional and health status and patterns of children and women in eight North Eastern States using health and nutritional indicators.

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).

By the end of 1970-71, about 19% of the total number of couples in the reproductive age-group, estimated to be I