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No. 101, 1997 Arends-Kuenning, Mary. "The equity and efficiency of doorstep delivery of contraceptives in Bangladesh," Policy Research Division Working Paper no. 101. New York: Population Council. Abstract Currently, the family planning policy of Bangladesh is moving away from the use of trained female family planning workers who deliver methods to the client’s doorstep and toward use of a traditional fixed service-delivery site. The efficiency and equity of doorstep delivery as it operated between 1984 and 1989 are investigated using longitudinal data from the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh Maternal and Child Health–Family Planning Extension Project (Rural). The analysis examines both technical and economic efficiency. Results suggest that the program was not technically efficient. Workers’ visits were most effective for uneducated women and for those who lived in the less developed regions. However, workers were not assigned disproportionately to these regions, and individual workers targeted visits to educated women. Changing workers’ incentives to target visits to uneducated women and reallocating workers may be cost-effective ways to improve the equity and efficiency of the program. In areas where there were fewer family planning workers, uneducated women relied on a variety of sources for contraceptive methods, but had lower rates of contraceptive prevalence. Ongoing research in Bangladesh should focus attention on how policy changes affect women with the fewest economic resources. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
