1M. Phil Fellow, Department of Population Science and Human Resource Development, Rajshahi University
2Associate Professor, Department of Population Science and Human Resource Development, Rajshahi University, Bangladesh
3Professor, Department of Population Science and Human Resource Development, Rajshahi University, Bangladesh
Social capital is a multidimensional concept which is used to refer to the goodwill, trust, and cooperation evident in Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). It note that NGOs have great role to build up a social networks which can be treated as a medium by which individual's learn about demographic behavior. Social networks can help to reduce costs of having children and that build a stock of fertility related social capital. Social interactions in personal networks affect individual's reproductive attitudes and behavior. NGOs have great contribution to make social capital through their various programs which helps poor women to become economically self-reliant through forming social capital.. In this context, this study has been conducted to know social capital, fertility intention and some determinants of fertility at Charghat Thana, Rajshahi district, Bangladesh. For this purpose, data were collected from 498 ever-married women through simple random sampling technique. The finding shows that social activities, norms and social capital formation characteristics were observed among NGO members. NGO members automatically build their social capital and help each other to form social capital through norms trust and social networks. Chi-square test has been used to provide the important significant differentials of fertility intention. The result shows that women age, education, age at marriage, contraceptive use, exposed to mass media and regular attendance of group meeting are significant variables for fertility intention. The multivariate logistic regression was used to exhibit significant predictors of NGO membership impact on social capital. It indicates women education, religion, exposed to mass media and feel family solvency impact on social capital. The multiple classification analysis has been employed to detect the important determinants of fertility and social capital. Women age, education, religion, age at marriage, exposed to mass media, contraceptive use and NGO involvement are the important determinants of fertility at Charghat thana.
Social capital, Fertility determinants, Chi-square test, Logistic regression, Multiple classification analysis
