Determinants of Fertility Trend at District, Divisional and Regional Levels and Policy Implication for Poverty Alleviation

Abstract

Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated countries of the world (1278 persons per sq. km.) but it represents one of the few countries in developing world where the pace of fertility decline has been unparalleled over the last few decades despite pervasive poverty and under-development. It has been passing through a critical phase of fertility transition. The data was collected for this research from the following five sources: i. Bangladesh Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) 2012-13 for fertility rate, contraceptive use, proportion of children engaged in work and access to mass media and ICT of women. ii. Statistical Yearbook of Bangladesh for literacy rate, iii. Population Census 2011 for population density characteristics of different districts, iv. Directorate of Agricultural Extension personnel for daily average wage rate of agricultural labor and v. Bangladesh Poverty Map, 2014 for the level of poverty of different districts. This study contributes to basic knowledge of the structural determinants of fertility rate in the Bangladesh by analyzing the expanded set of determinants at district level, namely contraceptive use, literacy rate, daily wage rate of agricultural labor, population density, child labor, access to mass media and ICT of women and poverty level using spatial data analysis techniques. In this study, the binary join matrix/binary contiguity matrix and inverse distance spatial weight matrix techniques are used to capture spatial dependence in the data. This analysis extends the spatial model by allowing spatial dependence to vary across divisions and regions. The results strongly indicate that the fertility associated with contraceptive use, literacy rate, daily wage rate of agricultural labor, child labor, poverty level and their neighbors’ districts. These results suggest that district should pay particular attention to policies in neighboring districts and policy maker should realize that declining the fertility rate in neighboring districts are likely to affect fertility rate in their own district, therefore, a key issue for policy development is how to stimulate the contraceptive use, educational attainment, promote daily wage of agricultural labor and decrease child labor and poverty level could control the fertility and result in sustainable development and poverty alleviation of regions that are both high fertility and economically lagging. This needs to be addressed both in terms of national level policies and more emphatically within regional and sub-regional development strategies than it has been hither.