Overview

"After three decades of research on the demographic significance of family planning programmes, a consensus is emerging that family planning programmes can constitute a fertility determinant. The ""first generation"" question, of whether formal programmes can modify fertility, is being supplanted by ""second generation"" questions of how they have their effects and how they interact with the climate of demand. Although debate persists on the demographic role of family planning programmes in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa where social and economic conditions are unfavourable to fertility regulation and where family planning programmes are constrained by limited demand for birth control and weak capacities to organize large-scale service delivery systems, the central question now is not whether family planning programmes can have an impact, but what are the ingredients required for formal programmes to interact effectively with the elements of demand in different settings. This volume presents an overview of the research evidence on the demographic role of family planning programmes. Chapters address this subject from perspectives that are prominent in the economic and sociological literatures on the nature of demand for contraception, and how that demand relates to such programme functions as normative change, legitimation of birth control, education, and supply of services. Authors challenge the assumption implicit in much of the literature, that demand and supply-side determinants are conceptually distinct - the two can interact, each stimulating growth in the other. Methodological and theoretical issues in efforts to measure programme effect on fertility are reviewed, and the practical utility of theory in the design of sociologically appropriate family planning programmes is appraised."

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9780198283850

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