Family planning in Bangladesh: an empirical investigation.

The year 1971 saw the emergence of Bangladesh as the eighth most populous nation on earth, a country combining extreme poverty with high density. One of the main challenges that feces this new nation in its quest for social development is the challenge of controlling its rate of population growth. With a crude birth rate close to 47 per thousand and a crude death rate close to 17 per thousand, the country's rate of population growth is estimated in the neighbourhood of 3 per cent per annum. This implies, at least in the immediate future, an annual net addition of about two million people. These are staggering annual additions that will certainly create enormous demands on the country's scarce resources.