Prevalent Factors Influencing Women’s Intention to Limit Childbearing: Empirical Evidence Based on Bangladesh Demography and Health Surveys

Aims: Bangladesh, as one of the most densely populated countries in the world, is facing an overpopulation crisis. Understanding the factors that influence a women's intention to limit her ability and desire to bear children is important for family planning program purposes and population policies. This paper has focuses on identifying the prevalent factors that influences a woman’s intention to limit pregnancy, by measuring the impact of those factors on her intentions. The paper also provides a few recommendations toward addressing issues regarding childbearing.

Methodology: This study is a retrospective analysis of data from the 2004, 2007, 2011 and 2014 Bangladesh Demography and Health Survey (BDHS). Cases in the study are childbearing-aged married women. The dependent variable is the women’s intention to limit her childbearing, in the forms of desiring more children or not. To measure the impact, a logistic regression model is considered.

Results: Results show that the women studied tended to limit their desire to bear a child is highly associated with older age, the number of children alive, living area concerns, whether a child has already died in the family, family planning and religion. Moreover, a surprising relationship was found among the people of differing economic and education statuses in relation to their tendency to limit a desire for children.

Conclusions: This study identifies different factors, such as access to media, age at first marriage, respondents working status, region, previous child death, religion and the total number of children as the most concurrent features for influencing a woman’s intention to limit pregnancy in Bangladesh. The study intends to initiate a discussion of the impact of these covariates on intentions which limit childbearing desires, which should be helpful to concerned authorities, policymakers and researchers in formulating policies.