Department of Anthropology, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2011;6(7):e22515. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0022515. Epub 2011 Jul 22.
Socio-economic development has proven to be insufficient to explain the time and pace of the human demographic transition. Shifts to low fertility norms have thus been thought to result from social diffusion, yet to date, micro-level studies are limited and are often unable to disentangle the effect of social transmission from that of extrinsic factors. We used data which included the first ever use of modern contraception among a population of over 900 women in four villages in rural Ethiopia, where contraceptive prevalence is still low (<20%). We investigated whether the time of adoption of modern contraception is predicted by (i) the proportion of ever-users/non ever-users within both women and their husbands' friendships networks and (ii) the geographic distance to contraceptive ever-users. Using a model comparison approach, we found that individual socio-demographic characteristics (e.g. parity, education) and a religious norm are the most likely explanatory factors of temporal and spatial patterns of contraceptive uptake, while the role of person-to-person contact through either friendship or spatial networks remains marginal. Our study has broad implications for understanding the processes that initiate transitions to low fertility and the uptake of birth control technologies in the developing world.
社会经济发展已被证明不足以解释人口转变的时间和速度。因此，人们认为生育率的转变是社会传播的结果，但迄今为止，微观层面的研究有限，往往无法将社会传播的影响与外部因素的影响区分开来。我们使用的数据包括在埃塞俄比亚农村的四个村庄中首次在 900 多名妇女中使用现代避孕措施，那里的避孕普及率仍然很低（<20%）。我们调查了现代避孕措施的采用时间是否受以下因素的影响：（i）女性及其丈夫的朋友圈中曾经使用者/非曾经使用者的比例，以及（ii）与曾经使用者的地理距离。通过模型比较方法，我们发现个体社会人口特征（例如，生育次数、教育程度）和宗教规范是最有可能解释避孕措施采用的时间和空间模式的因素，而通过友谊或空间网络进行的人际接触的作用仍然微不足道。我们的研究对于理解启动低生育率和发展中国家节育技术采用的过程具有广泛的意义。
