The Spread of Health Services and Fertility Transition

We use detailed measures of social change over time, increased availability of various health services, and couple's fertility behaviors to document the independent effects of health services on fertility limitation. Our investigation focuses on a setting in rural Nepal that experienced a transition from virtually no use of birth control in 1945 to the widespread use of birth control to limit fertility by 1995. Changes in the availability of many different dimensions of health services provide the means to evaluate their independent influences on contraceptive use to limit childbearing. Findings show that both family planning and maternal and child health services have independent effects on the rate of ending childbearing. For example, the provision of child immunization services increases the rate of contraceptive use to limit fertility independently of family planning services. Additionally, new GIS based measures also allow us to test many alternative models of the spatial distribution of services. These tests reveal that complex, geographically defined measures of all health service providers out perform more simple measures. These results provide new information about the consequences of maternal and child health services and the importance of these services in shaping fertility transitions.