The Determinants of Reproductive Change in Bangladesh: Success in a Challenging Environment

Demographic trends have taken many surprising forms over the last 30 years, but none have aroused such surprise, even incredulity, as recent events in Bangladesh. Although this country remains one of the poorest and least developed of all nations, there is mounting evidence of a steep decline in fertility. Fertility transition in such settings as China, Indonesia, and south India has already demonstrated that high material living standards are not a necessary precondition for a fall in birth rates. Yet in these cases alternative explanations were readily available; high levels of adult literacy in south India, for instance, and the prior creation of powerful nonfamilial welfare institutions in China. Bangladesh, in contrast, appears to possess no features that are conducive…