The effects of family planning effort and development on fertility: An intervening variables framework

To pinpoint the intervening variable that transmit the impacts of development and family planning effort on fertility, a modified proximate determinants model was applied to data from 59 developing countries. The intermediate variable included level of exposure to sexual intercourse (the percentage of women 20-24 years old in a union), deliberate marital fertility control (the percentage of married women of reproductive age who were using contraception), and natural marital fertility (operationalized as average per capita calorie consumption). The regression equations indicated that both social development and family planning effort can influence fertility levels substantially through their association with higher levels of contraceptive use. Interestingly, the direct effects of family planning and social development on the crude birth rate became insignificant when the intermediate variables were included in the same equation. Path analysis revealed that social development has an indirect effect of -0.083 via its influence on marriage patterns and of -0.316 due to its effect on contraceptive usage. Family planning has a lesser indirect impact on fertility (-0.487), and -0.111 of this effect reflects program effort's dependence on the level of social development. Economic development is positively linked to fertility, and future research should assess whether this factor is partially counterbalancing the fertility-reducing impact of social development and family planning programs. Although this analysis confirms that delayed marriage and widespread adoption of contraception are key intervening variables, they cannot influence fertility in societies where there are social or cultural impediments to such changes.