Role of Contraceptive Use Dynamics in Fertility Reduction and Women Empowerment in Bangladesh: Evidence From Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey

Contraceptive use dynamics plays the vital role for the fertility reduction and empowered women in Bangladesh which is indeed one of the most substantial achievements for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It is to identify the factors associated with contraceptive use and it seems imperative to know the issues related to contraceptive use through which fertility can be controlled. However, in Bangladesh though the rate of fertility has been declined for increasing use of contraceptives, but it is still far from replacement level. In this study, an attempt has been made to examine the role of contraceptive use dynamics for the fertility reduction in using nationally representative data from Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS), 2007. The study also emphasis on the issues related to contraceptive use and women autonomy and empowerment, which directly or indirectly have impact on fertility reduction in Bangladesh. The prominent multivariate technique such as logistic regression has been used to identify the important factors affecting contraceptive use, autonomy and empowerment. The result indicates that the contraceptive users are more empowered and autonomous than non-contraceptive users. Bongaarts model has been used to know the impact of contraceptive use on fertility reduction.