The influence of female education, labour force participation and age at marriage on fertility behaviour in Bangladesh.

Abstract

"The purpose of this paper was to study the relationship between certain aspects of the status of women (i.e., education, work experience and age at marriage) and the use of contraception and fertility, using data collected by the Bangladesh Fertility Survey (BFS) of 1975...." The analysis is presented separately for rural and urban areas. "Results of the tests in brief are as follows: (a) Education is found to be strongly correlated with the use of contraception within each sub-group of the study population.... Education is positively related with use of contraception and negatively with fertility....(b) age at marriage is found to be the most important factor explaining fertility for every sub-group of the study population. Couples marrying at higher ages are likely to have fewer children....and (c) work experience has very little or no effect on current use of contraception and fertility...."