Fertility transition in Bangladesh: Trends and determinants

In the late 1970s there was a consensus that pronounced fertility declines had occurred in many developing countries (Dyson and Murphy, 1985; Knodel, 1984). Bangladesh however was an exception and, even if some changes in fertility did take place, any analysis of those changes would be severely hampered owing to the poor quality and unreliability of its data. Nonetheless, because of recent improvements in data quality, particularly since the middle of the last decade, it is possible to examine trends in fertility patterns for the period 1975 -1985. However, some data from earlier periods are also used for drawing conclusions. Note should be taken of the fact that these data have specific methodological problems that raise questions about their comparability over time and cross-sectionally. Therefore, caution must be exercised in interpreting the estimates.