Source 35

Tamil Nadu is one of the most urbanized states in the country with 46 percent of the households in urban areas. On average, households in Tamil Nadu are comprised of 3.5 members. Twenty percent of households are headed by women.
The vast majority of households in Tamil Nadu have household heads who are Hindu (89%). Seven percent of household heads are Christians and 4 percent are Muslims. Seventy-five percent of household heads belong to other backward classes (OBC), 22 percent of households belong to scheduled castes, 1 percent belong to scheduled tribes, and only 2 percent of Tamil Nadu’s households do not belong to scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, or other backward classes.
A little over one-quarter of Tamil Nadu’s population (27%) is under age 15; only 7 percent is age 65 and over.
Among children under 18 years of age, 5 percent have experienced the death of one or both parents. In all, 82 percent of children under 18 years of age live with both parents, and 14 percent live with one parent.

Housing characteristics
Seventy percent of households in Tamil Nadu live in a pucca house. Eighty-nine percent of households (94% of urban households and 84% of rural households) have electricity, up from 79 percent at the time of NFHS-2. Fifty-seven percent of households have no toilet facilities, down from 66 percent at the time of NFHS-2. In rural areas, 83 percent of households do not have any toilet facilities.
Eighty-nine percent of households in Tamil Nadu have electricity, up from 79 percent at the time of NFHS-2.
Ninety-four percent of households use an improved source of drinking water, but only 25 percent have water piped into their dwelling, yard, or plot. One-third of households treat their drinking water to make it potable. Twenty-six percent of households boil the water, 3 percent strain the water through a cloth, and 4 percent use a ceramic, sand, or other filter. Thirty-nine percent of households use clean fuels (LPG, natural gas, kerosene, or biogas) for cooking (64% in urban areas and 17% in rural areas). More than four-fifths of rural households use solid fuel for cooking.


Tamil_Nadu.indd 2
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Wealth index
The wealth index is constructed by combining information on 33 house- hold assets and housing characteristics such as ownership of consumer items, type of dwelling, source of water, and availability of electricity, into a single index. The household population is divided into five equal groups of 20 percent each (quintiles) at the national level from 1 (lowest, poorest) to 5 (highest, wealthiest). Since the quintiles of the wealth index are defined at the national level, the proportion of the population of a particular state that falls in any specific quintile will vary across states.
According to the wealth index measure, Tamil Nadu has a lower percentage of poor people than India as a whole. Only 12 percent of the households in Tamil Nadu are in the lowest wealth quintile. Thirty-four percent of urban households are in the highest wealth quintile, in contrast to the rural areas, where only 7 percent of the households are in the highest wealth quintile.

EDUCATION
Current school attendance among children
Almost all primary-school age children (6-10 years) attend school (99% in urban areas and 98% in rural areas). School attendance drops to 88 percent for children age 11-14 years and is only 54 percent for children age 15-17 years.
Are there gender differentials in children’s Are there gender differentials in children’s
current school attendance? current school attendance?
Among children age 6-10 years, there is no
gender disparity in school attendance in
urban or rural areas. At older ages (11-14
years), in urban areas, the gender disparity
in school attendance in favour of boys
remains small (3 percentage points); but, in
rural areas, it is more pronounced (7
percentage points). At age 15-17 years, in
urban areas gender disparity in school
attendance is in favour of girls (by 11 percentage points), but in rural areas it is in favour of boys (by 21 percentage points).

Literacy and educational attainment
Twenty-two percent of women and 9 percent of men age 15-49 have never attended school. Two out of five men (39%) have completed 10 or more years of education, but only 32 percent of women have attained that level of education.
In NFHS-3, literate persons are those who have either completed at least standard six or passed a simple literacy test conducted as part of the survey. According to this measure, 69 percent of women and 84 percent of men age 15-49 are literate in Tamil Nadu.

http://www.nfhsindia.org/NFHS-3%20Data/TamilNadu_report.pdf

This will be great for my paper because it breaks down a lot of the sociodemographic conditions that I am looking for. Many of these statistics will be helpful for my paper and for understanding how sociodemographic conditions affect the oral habits.