My Choice: Female Contraceptive Use Autonomy in Bangladesh

Niels-Hugo Blunch, Washington and Lee University
Maitreyi B. Das, World Bank Group

Using a recent household survey for two cohorts of married women, this paper examines female contraceptive use autonomy incidence and determinants in Bangladesh focusing at the role of education. Female contraceptive use autonomy is found to differ substantially across cohorts, with females from the younger cohort being far more likely to have complete autonomy over contraceptive use than females from the older cohort. Additionally, females from Non-Muslim households are found to be far more likely to have complete autonomy over contraceptive use than females from Muslim households. Examining the correlates of female contraceptive use autonomy, the woman’s own education is found to be a strong correlate of female contraceptive use autonomy, both in substantive and statistical terms. Total and detailed decompositions of the generational contraceptive use autonomy gap reveals that education is the single most important factor explaining the increase in female contraceptive autonomy gap in Bangladesh in recent years.