Socioeconomic change and the demand for children in rural Bangladesh.

Recent survey research demonstrates that fertility in Bangladesh has declined from about seven births per woman at independence to about four by the end of the 1980s and to well below four by 1993. This paper examines social and economic trends in this period of rapid demographic change with particular attention to circumstances in the years immediately preceding the fertility transition. Structural forces that may have altered reproductive motives are examined: mortality decline poverty and landlessness educational attainment risk and the insurance value of children and economic roles and activities of women. Social trends may have altered reproductive aspirations in ways that set the stage for demographic transition. Modified aspirations may be explained by the changing occupational composition an opening of communities to outside information increased monetization of the rural economy and other changes that fostered widespread acceptance of population program information communication and services. Explanations that focus on the short-term effects of macroeconomic development or increased educational attainment are less relevant to the Bangladesh situation. The changes that have occurred have been registered with equal force among the poor and the better-off and among the educated and the illiterate. (authors)