Poverty and fertility: reproductive change under persistent poverty

In recent contributions to the discussion of fertility change in poor societies, two main lines of interpretation can be identified, the “materialist” and the "ideational" respectively. While the former emphasizes economic and security factors as prime causes of reproductive patterns and changes, the latter stresses the importance of diffusion of ideas and norms. The ideational perspective supports “supply side” policies for fertility decline, while the materialist perspective lends support to a more indirect welfare or “demand" side orientation to population policy. Bangladesh belongs to a group of countries with persistent and widespread poverty where the beginnings of fertility decline have now been recorded. The absence of any visibly significant socioeconomic changes for its rural majority has been used to justify claims that family planning activities have an independent effect on fertility. The paper draws together available evidence on the circumstances of rural life in Bangladesh. Taken together, the evidence is that changes have occurred in social relations in the household, brought about by economic crisis and in turn enabling changes in childbearing. The Bangladesh evidence confirms the difficulties encountered on a conceptual level in trying to maintain a distinction between materialist and ideational approaches to fertility analysis. The distinction between the two lines is unclear, and upholding it could be counterproductive to advances in the understanding of fertility change.