Edmund E. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA.
Demography. 2013 Feb;50(1):149-80. doi: 10.1007/s13524-012-0172-2.
We analyze the impact of an experimental maternal and child health and family planning program that was established in Matlab, Bangladesh, in 1977. Village data from 1974, 1982, and 1996 suggest that program villages experienced a decline in fertility of about 17 %. Household data from 1996 confirm that this decline in "surviving fertility" persisted for nearly two decades. Women in program villages also experienced other benefits: increased birth spacing, lower child mortality, improved health status, and greater use of preventive health inputs. Some benefits also diffused beyond the boundaries of the program villages into neighboring comparison villages. These effects are robust to the inclusion of individual, household, and community characteristics. We conclude that the benefits of this reproductive and child health program in rural Bangladesh have many dimensions extending well beyond fertility reduction, which do not appear to dissipate rapidly after two decades.
我们分析了 1977 年在孟加拉国马塔巴里建立的一项母婴健康和计划生育实验项目的影响。1974 年、1982 年和 1996 年的村庄数据表明，项目村庄的生育率下降了约 17%。1996 年的家庭数据证实，这种“存活生育率”的下降持续了近二十年。项目村庄的妇女还享受到了其他好处：生育间隔增加、儿童死亡率降低、健康状况改善以及更多地使用预防性卫生投入。一些好处也超出了项目村庄的范围，扩散到了邻近的对照村庄。这些影响在纳入个人、家庭和社区特征后仍然稳健。我们的结论是，孟加拉国农村地区这种生殖健康和儿童健康项目的好处具有许多方面，远远超出了降低生育率的范围，而且在二十年之后似乎不会迅速消失。
