Record Details

Sustaining a Regime of Low Fertility

Review of Social Sciences

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Field Value
 
Title Sustaining a Regime of Low Fertility
 
Creator Raeside, Robert
Gayen, Professor Kaberi
 
Subject —
Low fertility; social networks; reciprocal ties; communication
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Description In several developing countries, notably Bangladesh, fertility rates fell dramatically in the later part of the twentieth century and have sustained at low levels. Traditional socioeconomic models do not fully explain the profile of fertility fall especially for rural areas where well-being has not sufficiently improved. This paper offers a supplementary explanation that mass media facilitated the diffusion of contraceptive knowledge, leading to an ideological shift to value small families, and social networks especially reciprocal encouragement about contraception practice among network members has helped to sustain this shift. To investigate the role of encouragement of immediate network members in their family planning behavior, data was gathered using an interview-based survey of 694 women of fertile ages in seven rural Bangladeshi villages. Findings give support to the importance of social networks in maintaining achieved low fertility levels. When there is strong reciprocal encouragement of network members about practicing contraception then using contraception is more likely. This we propose may offer an explanation to why a low fertility regime has endured in Bangladesh. From this study policy recommendations are made to sustain low fertility.
 
Publisher LAR Center Press
 
Contributor —
 
Date 2016-07-31
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
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Format application/pdf
 
Identifier http://www.socialsciencejournal.org/index.php/site/article/view/56
10.18533/rss.v1i7.56
 
Source Review of Social Sciences; Vol 1, No 7 (2016): July; 44-53
2378-8550
2378-8569
 
Language eng
 
Relation http://www.socialsciencejournal.org/index.php/site/article/view/56/30
 
Rights Copyright (c) 2016 Robert Raeside, Professor Kaberi Gayen
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0