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This paper reports on an analysis of neonatal mortality from communicable and non-communicable diseases in Bangladesh. The competing-risks model employed incorporated both observed and unobserved heterogeneity and allowed the two heterogeneity terms to be correlated. The data used came from the Health and Demographic Surveillance System, Matlab. The results confirm the conclusions of previous studies about the levels, trends, and causes of neonatal death in the Matlab area: the education of the mother helps protect her children from death from both communicable and non-communicable diseases; the children of a father in a low-status occupation are particularly vulnerable to death from communicable diseases; and children born to mothers aged less than 20 face a particularly high risk of dying from a non-communicable disease. The risks of dying from a communicable disease and from a non-communicable disease were both found to fall significantly as the distance to the nearest health centre decreased. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Relatively little is known about how environmental and pathological threats to human survival and longevity are perceived by the public. In this study in rural Bangladesh and West Bengal, India, which used individual interviews and focus-group discussions to investigate the changing costs of and motivations for reproduction, respondents were questioned about their perceptions of changes in mortality. The findings show that, while child mortality levels are perceived to have fallen dramatically in recent times, the health and survival prospects of the middle aged and the elderly are seen to have been better in the past. The perceived decline in adult health is attributed to environmental deterioration and lifestyle changes accompanying modernization. This paper explores people's reasons for this unexpected worldview. References to pesticides and chemical fertilizers as causes of death abound in their explanations and are seen to be associated with unhealthy agricultural practices and impiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of family planning programmes and declining fertility in improving infant and child survival has been the subject of considerable debate. In this paper, we analyse data from Matlab, Bangladesh, to assess the net effect of falling total fertility on the mortality rates of young children. Areal time-series models are estimated to determine the role of fertility decline after having controlled for the effects of other health service interventions. The results show that fertility reductions have little effect on neonatal and posteneonatal mortality, possibly a small effect on toddler (second-year) mortality, and a significant and relatively large impact on the mortality of children aged between two and four years. Possible explanations for these findings and their implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses recent arguments that sustained fertility decline cannot occur in circumstances of inequality, insecurity, and injustice. Naturally, these conditions are to be abhorred. However, the empirical record suggests that none of them acts as an absolute barrier to mass adoption of birth control and subsequent fertility decline. Recent trends in Bangladesh illustrate this point most vividly. One of the greatest fallacies of many fertility theories has been the assumption that there is an economic or social imperative in underdeveloped countries for couples to have many children. To the contrary, the historic norm for all societies has been an average of only about two surviving children per woman, implying an adaptation to low, not high, net fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author describes the activities of elderly people in one part of rural Bangladesh. According to the author, Bangladesh remains a poor and highly labour-intensive economy where the great majority of people subsist directly as a result of their or their immediate family's physical labour. Women are vulnerable in this setting because cultural proscriptions block their access to the most remunerative forms of employment. The elderly are vulnerable to the extent that age renders them physically diminished. All, including adult males, are vulnerable if they do not have an able-bodied male to rely upon in the event of temporarily incapacitating illness, or calamities that call for diversified income. The concept of dependency as it has evolved in the West to describe the position of elderly who are unable to take care of themselves is in many ways culture-specific, particularly in its negative connotation, which derives largely from the peculiar value that western culture places on independence. While the elderly are not always revered in rural Bangladesh, and while they are sometimes evaluated harshly by other family members according to their usefulness or economic contribution, particularly in circumstances of extreme poverty, the Western concept of dependency is, nevertheless, thoroughly foreign to this culture, even though an older person may in fact rely completely on a son for material sustenance.

In this paper the sustained effects of the 1974-75 famine on cohort mortality in a rural area of Bangladesh are studied. In the analysis, mortality rates for children born and conceived during the famine are compared with those from a post-famine cohort. In the famine-born cohort, mortality was higher during the first and second years of life, while in the famine conceived cohort it was higher during the first year and lower during the second compared to the non-famine cohort. No significant differences in mortality by cohort were observed between the ages of 24 and 59 months. Using logistic regression, interactions between famine and socio-demographic characteristics were also studied. Three principal results emerged: first, a differential effect of the famine by socio-economic group was only present during the post-neonatal period for the famine-born cohort; secondly, children aged 12-23 months who were born to younger mothers were more adversely affected by the famine than those born to older mothers; and thirdly, although there was excess mortality for girls aged 24-59 months relative to boys of the same age in the non-famine and famine-conceived cohorts, there was little difference between mortality by sex for the famine-born. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Bangladesh twice as many births occur in December as in July. This paper examines the seasonal patterns of the risks of conception, fetal loss and return of menses post partum in a longitudinal study of 2,300 women in 14 villages of Matlab, Bangladesh. Life tables were estimated for each month of entry event and then 'period' life tables were constructed with the risks for a given calendar month. Confirming the results of earlier studies, risks of resumption of menses were higher in November and December, regardless of time elapsed since the last birth. Similarly, there are increased conception risks in the period from February to April for all fecundable women. The time of lowest fetal loss and stillbirth risks is in the cool season, though this variation makes only a minor contribution to the overall seasonality of births. The pattern of fecundability estimated from data on coital frequency did not match the pattern estimated from reported conceptions; these discrepancies imply possible seasonal changes in other parameters of fecundability besides intercourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Female Status and Fertility Behaviour in a Metropolitan Urban Area of Bangladesh The paper examines hypotheses that certain aspects of status of married women such as (i) decision-making power; (ii) employment status and (iii) educational status, are positively associated with use of contraception and inversely related to fertility performance. The study is based on 1,130 women of reproductive age (15-49) who are currently married and living with their husbands and reported to be fecund. The data are drawn from a cross-section of working and non-working women of Dacca City. The hypothesis that each of the above status variables is related to fertility behaviour (measured as current use of contraception and number of children ever-born) is confirmed, with the sole exception of the relationship between female employment status and fertility behaviour. Female participation in the labour force has little or no effect on use of contraception, particularly among those who belong to higher education and income groups. However, in the lower education and income groups, fertility and use of contraception vary with work experience. The findings clearly point out the need to improve the status of women in order to achieve a breakthrough in the use of contraception and a reduction in fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The data for this study come from Matlab, a rural area of Bangladesh, where a continuous registration of demographic events has been maintained by the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh since 1966. A total of 11,951 first marriages of Muslims that took place in the area between 1975 and 1987 were followed until the end of 1989, to examine the relationship between parental marriage breakdown and survival of first live-born children. The impact of divorce on survival of children during infancy and childhood was examined, using hazard analysis. Other independent variables included age of mother at birth, and mother's education, year of birth, sex of children, and residence at the time of childbirth. It is shown that the net odds of death among children of divorced mothers in infancy and childhood were respectively 3.2 and 1.4 times higher than those of mothers whose marriages continued. The paper also discusses the possible mechanisms which link divorce and child survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is informed that there are Indian and African cultures according to which it is considered shameful or unacceptable for a woman to continue childbearing once she has become a grandmother. In the absence of contraception, adherence to this custom implies permanent or terminal abstinence. The custom is demographically significant in traditional cultures as women commonly become grandmothers at relatively young ages in substantial sections of the population. In this article, the author uses data of World Fertility Survey collected in Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka to assess the evidence for its existence in these countries, to measure its bearing on total marital fertility, and to determine its effect on the age pattern of marital fertility. The hypothesis is that marital fertility is reduced when a woman becomes a mother-in-law or equivalently a potential grandmother. In any given population such a reduction very probably implies adherence to the "grandmother" custom. It is opined that becoming a grandmother is synonymous with becoming a mother-in-law, since marriage is generally followed closely by childbirth, because the childbearing role of women is emphasized in these societies and contraception is little used. Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka provide three widely differing cultural environments for examining the "grandmother' custom. Although largely rural in character, they differ in the extent to which modernization has taken place, Sri Lanka being the most modernized. The countries also differ in religious and ethnic composition. Nepal is largely Hindu, but has also been influenced by sub-Tibetan cultures. In Bangladesh, the social fabric is extremely uniform: Islam is the professed faith of 85 percent of the population; and most Bangladeshis trace their ancestry to the Dravidian-speaking Bang tribe.

Brass's method for estimating child mortality is based on an ingeniously simplified model. However, it frequently leads to values of q(x) that are not consistent with each other. This is most obvious for estimates of q(1). This paper examines the extent to which such inconsistencies are caused by simplifications in the model. Three assumptions are relaxed by adjusting for differences in infant mortality by birth order, taking account of annual fluctuations in mortality, and using a different age pattern of fertility for each cohort. These adjustments are applied to data from the 1974 Bangladesh Retrospective Survey of Fertility and Mortality and the 1975 Bangladesh Fertility Survey in which additional data from the Cholera Research Laboratory are used. The resulting estimates are more consistent both internally and with estimates from other surveys and by other procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the applicability of the thesis by economist J.C. Caldwell, that large families bring more benefits to their members than do small families, into an empirically operational form and test it against households survey data collected in Bangladesh early in 1977. There is a statistically significant inverse correlation between adjusted consumption of rice per head and family size. The fact that larger families do less well by conventional measures of welfare, particularly food consumption per head, requires an explanation. However, there is no evidence of decreasing returns to scale in production and land holdings per head are not related to household size. So, the cause of the apparent inverse statistical relationship between adjusted food consumption and family size is not likely to be found in the technology of household production. Another explanation is that the distribution of food becomes more unequal as household size increases. The increasing pressure of population and land shortage may be increasing the costs and reducing the benefits of large families.

This analysis of infant mortality in Bangladesh focuses on explaining death clustering within families, using prospective data from a rural region in Bangladesh, split into areas with and without extensive health services (the area covered by the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research and the comparison area, respectively). The modelling framework distinguishes between two explanations of death clustering: (observed and unobserved) heterogeneity across families and a causal ‘scarring’ effect of the death of one infant on the survival chances of the next to be born. Keeping observed and unobserved characteristics constant, we find scarring in the comparison area only. There the likelihood of infant death is about 29 per cent greater if the previous sibling died in infancy than otherwise. This effect mainly works through birth intervals: infant deaths are followed by shorter birth intervals, which increases the risk of infant death for the next child. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using high-quality longitudinal data on 125,720 singleton live births in Matlab, Bangladesh, we assessed the effects of duration of intervals between pregnancy outcomes on infant and child mortality and how these effects vary over subperiods of infancy and childhood and by the type of outcome that began the interval. Controlling for other correlates of infant and child mortality, we find that shorter intervals are associated with higher mortality. Interval effects are greater if the interval began with a live birth than with another pregnancy outcome. In the first week of the child's life, the effects of short intervals are greater if the sibling born at the beginning of the interval died; after the first month, the effects are greater if that sibling was still alive. Many relationships found are consistent with the maternal depletion hypothesis, and some with sibling competition. Some appear to be due to correlated risks among births to the same mother. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic contribution of children to their parents' households has long interested demographers because of its potential to influence fertility levels. Valuing children's labour in pre-industrial economies, however, is inherently difficult. The same is true of women's labour, a crucial component of any analysis of net production. Here we use Mead Cain's seminal study (Population and Development Review 3(3): 201-227, 1977) of children's economic contributions in a Bangladeshi village to illustrate these points. We combine Cain's data on landless women's and men's hours of work with data on the efficiency per hour of work from other pre-industrial settings (Mueller, Population and Development: The Search for Selective Interventions. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 98-153, 1976; Kramer, Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, 1998). When women's labour is incorporated, we find that the Bangladeshi children begin to produce as much as they consume by ages 10 (girls) or 11 (boys). Despite these productive contributions, neither women nor men 'pay' for their cumulative consumption until their early 20s. We believe our methods could be usefully applied in other contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses high quality longitudinal data on kin availability, proximity, and marital status from the Matlab surveillance area in rural Bangladesh to explore the impact of kin members on the survival of the elderly over a six year period. The results -- from discrete time hazard models- suggest that the presence of a spouse, sons, and brothers substantially improves survivorship, but with differing effects by the sex of the elderly and the number of sons and brothers. This study offers little support of any of the following as mechanisms by which kin affect the survival of the elderly: changes in the economic status of the elderly as proxied by land holdings; improved access to instrumental support as proxied by the marital status of sons; decreases in social isolation as proxied by proximity of kin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A method of partitioning the fertility impact of infant and child death into two components - a physiological and a behavioural effect - is proposed by use of the Cox hazard model with three dummy variables that indicate the time of child death and the status of breastfeeding with reference to the return of menstruation postpartum. An application of the method to the 1991 Bangladesh Contraceptive Prevalence Survey data suggests that the effect from the physiological mechanism outweighed the effect from the behaviourial mechanism (the former effect raising the hazard of an additional birth by nearly 90 per cent). It appears that the effect of a child death declined over time and an early cessation of breastfeeding was not the sole cause for invoking the physiological mechanism. The risk of childbirth rose sharply among the educated if their children died, although the main effect of education itself was to reduce the risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article an attempt is made to examine whether the positive effect of mother's education on child survival is similar for boys and girls, by using a prospective study in a rural area of Bangladesh. Results indicate the positive effect of mother's education on child survival between the ages of six and 35 months when the effects of other variables are held constant. Univariate analysis carried out earlier in the study population also confirmed the importance of mother's education in relation to child survival. Higher mortality of girls during childhood, especially after the first five months of life, was also found in other studies. The different impact of mother's education on survival of children of different sexes, as observed in the present and in an earlier study, clearly indicates how deep-rooted sex discrimination is in this community. An understanding of its mechanisms, and identification of the factors responsible is of interest to those concerned about mortality in such communities.

This article presents information on the relationship of maternal nutritional status with intra-uterine mortality, in a sample of chronically malnourished rural Bangladeshi women. First, they discuss measurement problems which are unique to the study of intra-uterine mortality and compare life-table rates from our sample with those from other studies. Then,employ multivariate techniques to describe the association of foetal mortality with mother's nutritional status and other factors. While the researchers are usually interested in foetal death itself, the abortion resulting from foetal mortality is, in most cases, the event actually observed. Expulsion from the womb may take place sometime after the death. Most intra-uterine deaths occur during the first trimester and are primarily due to serious genetic abnormalities in the foetus. The incidence of genetic anomalies appears to be closely associated with maternal age. In most studies of intra-uterine mortality a strong positive relationship between age and foetal mortality is found, and in some high rates for pregnancies to women under 20 years old are also reported. The social scientists estimate that a substantial portion of the increase in foetal mortality rates among older women is due to an increase in the proportion of fetuses with chromosomal abnormalities.

The article focuses on the sensitivity of estimated fertility levels and trends to alternative interpretations of responses in fertility surveys. It uses data from the 1975 Bangladesh Fertility Survey. It presents some simple mathematical models to evaluate the consequences of an erroneous interpretation. The author also presents some guidelines for a correct interpretation. It refers to a package program of the Central Office of the World Fertility Survey which edits and imputes different types of dates in World Fertility Survey questionnaires. It is found that in Bangladesh, the imputation had no serious impact upon, fertility levels.

The article discusses the relationship between socio-economic factors and fertility in a rural area of Bangladesh. Fertility was generally higher among the higher socio-economic groups in rural Bangladesh. Socio-economic differentials in fertility are examined by using data collected from a daily registration system covering over 100,000 persons in rural Bangladesh during the period 1968-1970. The findings indicate that fertility was generally higher among women in the higher socio-economic groups and lower in the lower socio-economic groups. Fertility is higher for women whose families are producers of rice or jute crops. Also there is a direct relationship between fertility and size of holding with a difference of a little over 13 percent. The study presents several factors associated with high socioeconomic groups and their relation with intermediate variables and depicts as providing linkages with reference to high fertility. These include, health status, breastfeeding and the enforcement of purdah. In conclusion, this study represents a preliminary step in research on differential fertility in rural Bangladesh.

Analysis of data from various phases of a study of post-partum amenorrhoea in Bangladesh illustrated good aggregate consistency of response on menstrual status, but less individual consistency on duration of postpartum amenorrhoea. Using life table techniques, the median duration of amenorrhoea was calculated as 19.9 months for women with births between February and September 1974. There were substantial seasonal variations in duration, with the median decreasing from 21.5 months for women with February births to 16.9 months for those with September births. By contrast, the median duration of post-partum amenorrhoea varies by only two months for women in the lowest and highest quartiles of weight and weight for height. The seasonal pattern was similar for all weight groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A cross-sectional survey of 2048 breastfeeding women in rural Bangladesh was conducted in 1975 to explore factors affecting the duration of post-partum amenorrhoea. Information on menstrual status, infant supplementation, socio-economic status and anthropometric measurements was collected for lactating women with infants 13-21 months of age. The median length of amenorrhoea was observed to be over 18 months. There was a higher probability of being amenorrhoeic for older women and those of lower socio-economic status. Maternal malnutrition extended the duration of amenorrhoea slightly. Women feeding their infants higher-quality supplements were less likely to be amenorrhoeic than those supplying their infants with less adequate supplements. The figures suggest that the pattern of breastfeeding plays the primary role in determining lengths of lactational amenorrhoea for this rural population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem investigated is the adequacy of birth-history analysis as a method for estimating fertility change. The analysis demonstrates that inaccurate reporting of the dates of birth of live-born children can, under reasonable assumptions, significantly distort cohort fertility schedules in such a way that estimates of change in fertility will be biased in the direction of exaggerating declines in fertility. This kind of bias is shown to exist in fertility estimates obtained from survey data in El Salvador and Bangladesh. An important implication is that birth history questionnaires should begin with the most recent, rather than the earliest, event in a respondent's experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interrelationship between mortality and fertility is considered one of the most significant areas of policy-oriented population research. Indeed, knowledge regarding one aspect of this complex relationship has already proved useful in shaping population policy. In the past two decades, the adoption and implementation of many national family planning programs, despite potential opposition, have been based, at least in part, on research documenting the adverse consequences of excessively high fertility on health and mortality. Such information has also provided a key policy rationale for the participation of health scientists, administration, and health ministries in population control programs. In this article, authors present an empirical analysis of the effects, both behavioral and biological, of child deaths on subsequent fertility in two South Asian countries with moderately high levels of child mortality. Data for the investigation come from two sources: retrospective pregnancy histories of a national probability sample of currently married women interviewed in the Pakistan National Impact Survey, and longitudinal vital registration data of rural women followed from 1966 to 1970 by the Cholera Research Laboratory in a rural population laboratory in Bangladesh.

It is informed that prior to the demographic transition in the now industrialized world, short-term fluctuations in births and deaths due to disasters-- famine, epidemic, war-- were common events. This article presents the findings of an investigation into the impact of one recent crisis, the 1971 Bangladesh Civil War, on births and deaths in a population of approximately 120,000 in rural Bangladesh. Data for the analysis come from a longitudinal vital registration system maintained by the Cholera Research Laboratory in Matlab Bazar thana, Bangladesh. Baseline trends of vital events for the years 1966-67 to 1970-71 are presented. Short-term fluctuations in births and deaths during the disturbances of 1971-72 and in the two subsequent years are analysed, and selected fertility and mortality rates are computed to document the differential impact of the conflict on the population. March 1971, marked the beginning of the Bangladesh Civil War. In the early part of that month, the urban workers in Bangladesh went on strike, many returning to their village homes. On March 25, 1971, armed conflict between the Pakistan army and Bengali civilians erupted. Over the next nine months, a conventional army attempted to subdue a rebellious civilian population. The conflict was not static. Initially the army held strategic positions in urban and transport centres and made periodic expeditions into the countryside. By June-July, however, a guerilla insurgency had developed and armed clashes in the countryside became common.

It is informed that enough is known about the population of the newly emerged state of Bangladesh to establish its importance in the field of demography. Warm and moist, Bangladesh is crisis-crossed by rivers and their tributaries, which often change course and cause the destruction of human habitations that flourish near their banks. The climate and action of the rivers have destroyed most of the historical remains of Bangladesh. The shifting rivers of the deltaic region also inhibited the growth of cities, and Bangladesh still remains predominantly rural. Censuses and vital registration in Bangladesh extend over a full century, but vital registration remained severely defective, and at least one census, the census of 1941, resulted in a gross overcount because of political maneuvering. Regular population censuses were taken in Bangladesh from 1872 until the partition of the sub-continent in 1947, as a part of the undivided Indian province of Bengal. Bangladesh and Assam were divided into separate provinces in 1905, but as a result of powerful political agitation were reunited shortly after.