The influence of female education, labor force participation, and age at marriage on fertility behavior in Bangladesh

This paper studies the relationship between three aspects of female status (education, work experience, and age at marriage) and the use of contraception and fertility in Bangladesh. Education is found to be the variable most strongly correlated with use of contraception and is also one of the significant variables explaining fertility behavior. The most important factor explaining fertility behavior is age at marriage. The higher the age at marriage, the lower the fertility, when all other factors are held constant. Work experience has very little or no effect on current use of contraception and fertility.