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Recent estimates of fertility in Botswana suggest a rapid decline of more than two births per woman between 1981 and 1988. This paper proposes that the baseline fertility was overestimated but that nonetheless fertility declined by about one birth per woman during the 1980s. The decline in fertility was linked to a deterioration in social and economic conditions caused by a major drought in the early 1980s and to the increased availability of family planning services in the same period. Fertility apparently began to rebound in the late 1980s in response to improved conditions, which came about as a result of a successful drought relief program. Future declines in fertility depend on the continued success of the family planning program, particularly in rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the determinants of contraceptive use in Bangladesh, focusing on the roles of demand for additional children and of family planning service supply. Data from the Matlab Family Planning Health Services Project are used to examine the contributions of these factors to the difference in prevalence of modern contraceptive use between the project area and a control area served by the government family planning and health programs. Results of multivariate analysis deriving from the Easterlin synthesis framework show the importance of family planning supply factors in reducing psychic and resource costs of fertility regulation and in activating latent demand for contraception. Demand for birth limiting and for birth spacing emerge as important explanatory factors; demand for birth spacing is greater in the project area, and both demand measures exert a stronger effect on contraceptive behavior in that area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]