CHANGES IN REPRODUCTIVE BEHAVIOR IN BANGLADESH

Bangladesh is renowned for its chronic population woes. What is less well known is its recent success in controlling rapid population growth. Not only is this success significant for the people of Bangladesh, it has major implications for demographers, social scientists, policymakers, and population planners around the world. A real-fife laboratory for population researchers, the recent experience of this South Asian country disproves beliefs that birthrates drop only after economic conditions improve. It also refutes the contention that "development is the best contraceptive an idea expounded twenty-three years ago at the World Population Conference in Bucharest and revived some ten years later at the International Conference on Population in Mexico City (Popline 1994, 3). MY objectives here are to examine the changes in reproductive behavior in Bangladesh and to analyze the factors associated with the remarkable decline in fertility rates. BACKGROUND Population problems in Bangladesh are best outlined with the help of selected indicators. Bangladesh is comparatively small in terms of area, ranking ninety-sixth among 196 countries, but it is the ninth most populous country in the world (PRB 1995). To put it another way, Bangladesh is slightly smaller than Wisconsin, with 23 times the population of that state. The 125 million Bangladeshis are crowded into 56,000 square miles, which means that the country has an average of more than 2,000 people per square mile. The corresponding density of population in the United States is only 74 persons per square mile. Bangladesh is the most densely populated nation (excluding city-states) in the world. Each year the country adds about 3 million people to its population; every five years it adds as many people as inhabit the entire continent of Australia. Sheer numbers, high population density, and rapid population growth characterize the population problem in Bangladesh. CHANGES IN FERTILITY RATES The results of the 1993-1994 Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS) brought good news for the country. The news was not unexpected, for the 1991 Census of Bangladesh and other recent studies suggested the onset of a dramatic decline in fertility rates in Bangladesh. The BDHS was financed by the US. Agency for International Development/Dhaka, and technical assistance for the project was provided by Macro International, Inc., of Calverton, Maryland. The BDHs was a nationally representative survey of 9,640 ever-married women aged 10 to 49 and of 4,200 of their husbands, designed to collect information on levels and trends of fertility and mortality. The BDHS Was intended to serve as a source of population and health data for policymakers and the research community (Mitra and others 1994, 6). Fertility rates are expressed in many ways. The two most popular ways are crude birthrate (CBR) and total fertility rate (TFR). The CBR is the annual number of live births per thousand population. Over time the CBR in Bangladesh has declined sub stantially: from 49.4 in 1951, to 31.6 in 1990, to 30.8 in 1992 (BBS 1994a, 55). A more accurate statement of fertility is the TFR, the average number of children a woman bears. The TFR in Bangladesh declined from 6.3 in 1975 to 4.3 in 1991. Then, in the next three years, it plummeted an additional 21 percent, to 3.4 --the most dramatic drop in fertility ever recorded in Bangladesh (Figure1). According to BDHS data, the decline in fertility is occurring at approximately the same rate among all age groups and in all five regions of the country. BDHS data confirm Year of Survey that the previously documented rapid decline in fertility in Bangladesh is not only continuing but, probably, accelerating. [Figure 1 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A number of factors have played a role in fertility decline in Bangladesh. For both sexes the mean age at first marriage has risen substantially: for women, from 14. …