Does women's literacy affect desired fertility and contraceptive use in rural-urban Pakistan?

The 1984-85 Pakistan Contraceptive Prevalence Survey showed that urban wives had more than twice the literacy rate of rural wives. The present study explored the relationship of the rural-urban gap in female literacy to differences in contraceptive use. In rural areas, literacy did not increase women's perceptions of having reached a 'sufficient' number of living children, although the opposite was true for urban areas. Yet rural women with an 'insufficient' number of living children were more likely to use contraception if they were literate, as did their urban counterparts. Thus, raising the literacy rate in rural Pakistan would not narrow the rural-urban gap in contraception to cease childbearing but would narrow the rural-urban gap in contraception used to space wanted births further apart. Recommendations for government policy are made.