Fertility-Inhibiting Strategies of Women from Different Language Groups in Turkey: An Application of Bongaarts Model: TDHS 1998 and 2008

In this study, Bongaarts model is applied for Turkish and Kurdish speaking women comparatively, using data from 1998 and 2008 Turkey Demographic and Health Surveys. Bongaarts model uses four factors that affect fertility. These are proportion of married women, use of contraception, induced abortion and infecondity due to breasfeeding. Other determinats are assumed to have less negligible effects on fertility.
The results imply that total natural marital fertility rate is increasing for both language groups depicting the decreasing postpartum infecundability. This is especially eminent for Kurdish speaking women where total natural marital fertility rate has increased from 12,29 in 1998 to 13,72 in 2008. Total marial fertility rate and the implied total fertility rate are decreasing for both language groups.
The contributions of the indexes to the total differentitation between total natural fertility rate and the implied total fertility rate are considered. The highest contribution is from index of contraception which is followed by index of proprtion married for both language groups. For Turkish speaking women contribution of index of proportion married has only changed very slightly (from 63,94 per cent to 63,20 per cent). On the other hand for Kurdish speaking women it has increased from 49,14 to 67,89 per cent.