John B. Casterline

• PhD
• Professor at The Ohio State University

The desire to avoid pregnancy-to delay the next birth or have no further births-is a fundamental sexual and reproductive health indicator. We show that two readily available measures-prospective fertility preferences and the demand for contraception [Demand] construct-provide substantially different portraits of historical trends. They also yield c...

Rationale The desired number of children is markedly higher in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) than in other major regions. Efforts to understand how and why these desires are generated and maintained have yielded a broad research literature. Yet there is no full picture of the range of contextual, cultural, and economic factors that support and disrupt h...

Background Rates of contraceptive discontinuation are high in many low and middle countries contributing to unmet need for contraception and other adverse reproductive health outcomes. Few studies have investigated how women's beliefs about methods and strength of fertility preferences affect discontinuation rates. This study examines this question...

Since childbearing desires, and trends in these desires, differ across populations, the inclusion of women who want to become pregnant in the denominator for unintended pregnancy rates complicates interpretation of intercountry differences and trends over time. To address this limitation, we propose a rate that is the ratio of the number of uninten...

Background: The number of women using long-acting reversible contraception (LARC)-intrauterine devices (IUDs) and implants-is increasing and 14% of contraceptive users in the United States adopt LARC. We examined correlates of LARC never-use in a population-based survey of reproductive-aged women in Ohio. Methods: We analyzed data from the 2018-...

Background: In most societies, childbearing is largely confined to women in formal marital unions, but in a subset of contemporary low-fertility Western societies, extramarital fertility has become common. However, extramarital fertility is often ignored in fertility research in contemporary low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Objective: To d...

The past four decades have witnessed an enormous increase in modern contraception in most low- and middle-income countries. We examine the extent to which this change can be attributed to changes in fertility preferences versus fuller implementation of fertility preferences, a distinction at the heart of intense debates about the returns to investm...

A key barrier to the consistent use of condoms is their negative effect on sexual pleasure. Although sexual pleasure is a primary motivation for engaging in sex and is an integral part of overall sexual health, most programs to improve sexual health operate within a pregnancy and disease-prevention paradigm. A new condom, CSD500 (Futura Medical Dev...

We tested whether CSD500 (Futura Medical; Guildford, UK), a novel condom containing erectogenic gel designed to increase penile firmness, penile size, and erection duration, results in greater sexual pleasure. In 2017-2020, we randomized heterosexual couples in Thanh Hoa, Vietnam to use CSD500 (N = 248) or standard condoms (N = 252) and followed th...

The last four decades have witnessed large declines in fertility globally. This study uses data from 78 low- and middle-income countries to examine concurrent trends in unwanted fertility. Three measures of unwanted fertility are contrasted: the conventional unwanted total fertility rate, a proposed conditional unwanted fertility rate, and the perc...

Background: Rates of contraceptive discontinuation are high in many low and middle countries contributing to unmet need for contraception and other adverse reproductive health outcomes. Few studies have investigated how method specific beliefs and strength of fertility preferences affect discontinuation rates. This study examines this question usin...

Background Legislative and judicial procedures related to banning abortion after six weeks of gestation in Ohio occurred from November 2018 to July 2019. These activities could have increased the belief that abortion has become illegal even though, to date, the six-week ban has never been in effect. Objectives We sought to determine the prevalence...

Objectives We describe the prevalence and correlates of non-use of preferred contraceptive method among women 18-44 years of age in Ohio using contraception. Study Design The population-representative Ohio Survey of Women had 2,529 participants in 2018-2019, with a response rate of 33.5%. We examined prevalence of preferred method non-use, reasons...

Survey data on fertility preferences have played a central but controversial role in fertility research and advocacy for family planning. We summarize evidence from longitudinal studies in 28 Asian and African populations on the relationship between preferences and subsequent childbearing. While we found no consistent association between women's de...

Context: The factors underlying contraceptive method choice are poorly understood in many countries, including Bangladesh. It is important to understand how Bangladeshi women's perceptions of a method's attributes are associated with their intention to use that method. Methods: Data on 2,605 married women aged 15-39 living in rural Matlab were t...

This study examines factors associated with satisfaction with oral pills and injectables among past users in Kenya based on a baseline survey for the 2-year prospective longitudinal study Improving Measurement of Unintended Pregnancy and Unmet Need for Family Planning conducted in 2016. Married women aged 15–39 years were interviewed using a struct...

Despite an extensive evidence base on contraceptive method choice, it remains uncertain which factors are most influential in predisposing women toward certain methods and against others. This paper addresses this gap in knowledge by making use of rarely‐measured perceptions about specific methods, perceived social network experience of methods, an...

Background: Missing from the huge literature on women's attitudes and beliefs concerning specific contraceptive methods is any detailed quantitative documentation for all major methods in low- and middle-income countries. The objectives are to provide such a documentation for women living in Matlab (rural Bangladesh), Nairobi slums and Homa Bay (r...

Background: Unmet need for family planning points to the gap between women's reproductive desire to avoid pregnancy and contraceptive behaviour. An estimated 222 million women in low- and middle-income countries have unmet need for modern contraception. Despite its prevalence, there has been little rigorous research during the past fifteen years o...

Background 'Unrealized fertility' is a failure to achieve desired fertility. Unrealized fertility has been examined in low-fertility societies but, with the exception of research on infertility, has been neglected in research on non-Western societies. Objective We conduct a multicountry investigation of one form of unrealized fertility, namely a re...

Fertility in the Middle East and North Africa declined by more than one-half in the period from 1960 to 2010, most rapidly in the two decades from the 1970s to the 1990s. At present seven of the 22 countries have fertility below replacement level (two births per woman), while the fertility rate exceeds three births per woman in six countries. Chang...

This study assesses how changes in unmet need for family planning have contributed to contemporary fertility declines, and the implications of this historical record for further fertility decline, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. We examine joint trends at the national level in fertility, unintended fertility, and unmet need. We bring unintended f...

During the past two decades, estimates of unmet need have become an influential measure for assessing population policies and programs. This article recounts the evolution of the concept of unmet need, describes how demographic survey data have been used to generate estimates of its prevalence, and tests the sensitivity of these estimates to variou...

BACKGROUND Previous research on interrelations between migration and marriage has relied on overly simplistic assumptions about the structure of dependency between the two events. However, there is good reason to posit that each of the transitions has an impact on the likelihood of the other, and that unobserved common factors may affect both migra...

this high fertility combined with declining mortality has resulted in rapid population growth—2.5 percent per year—and the un projects the sub-Saharan population to grow from 0.86 billion in 2010 to 1.96 billion in 2050 and 3.36 billion in 2100. Such unprecedented expansion of human numbers creates a range of social, economic, and environmental cha...

Given that fertility rates are high in most sub-Saharan countries, it is critically important to understand the drivers of the demand for children to inform population reduction policies. Yet little is known about the individual-level factors that drive the desire for fertility limitation. The desire to limit births may be driven by the achievement...

Why is induced abortion common in environments in which modern contraception is readily available? This study analyses qualitative data collected from focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with women and men from low-income areas in five countries--the United States, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru and Mexico--to better understand how couples man...

The contribution of public family planning services to decline in human fertility, and hence the achievement of demographic stabilization, remains highly salient, given continued population growth in many countries. Casterline will review the history and effectiveness of past family planning efforts, and he will evaluate influential recent assessme...

Despite extensive research, doubts remain regarding the degree of correspondence between prior stated fertility preferences and subsequent fertility behavior. Preference instability is a factor that potentially undermines predictiveness. Furthermore, if other predictors of fertility substantially explain fertility, then knowledge of preferences may...

Fertility preferences are revised in the light of changing life and reproductive circumstances. Over time, an individual's fertility preferences may fluctuate along a continuum. In this study, we describe typical patterns of change (or stability) in individual fertility preferences over a period of five years using a prospective panel study of wome...

The distinction between wanted and unwanted fertility has been crucial in many of the more intense debates in recent decades over the nature of contemporary fertility declines and, in particular, the potential impact of expanded provision of family planning services. In a muchdebated article published in 1994, Pritchett argues that decline in desir...

The distinction between wanted and unwanted fertility has been crucial in many of the more intense debates in recent decades over the nature of contemporary fertility declines and, in particular, the potential impact of expanded provision of family planning services. In a much-debated article published in 1994, Pritchett argues that decline in desi...

This paper offers an overview of levels and trends in unwanted fertility in Latin America (including the Caribbean) based on national demographic surveys conducted from the mid-1970s to the present. We present estimates on a per child basis (percentage of births unwanted) and a per woman basis (unwanted births per woman, i.e. unwanted fertility rat...

The estimation of unwanted fertility is a major objective of demographic surveys, including DHS surveys conducted in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Levels and trends in unwanted fertility are important input to the formulation of population policy and the evaluation of family planning programs. Yet existing methods for estimating unwanted fertili...

This study was funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) under the terms of Cooperative Agreements Number HRN-A-00-98-00012-00 and HRN-A-00-99-00010-00, and Population Council In-house project number 5806.53091 and Subaward number I04.12A. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect th...

Although unmet need for family planning is a standard measure for evaluating programs' effectiveness in meeting the reproductive needs of individuals, its validity and accuracy in identifying women most at risk of unintended pregnancy have been questioned. Women who participated in the 1995 Egypt Demographic and Health Survey in two governorates in...

Books reviewed in this article: Neil J. Diamant, Revolutionizing the Family: Politics, Love, and Divorce in Urban and Rural China, 1949–1968 International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, World Disasters Report 2000: Focus on Public Health Christian Joppke, Immigration and the Nation-State: The United States, Germany, and Great B...

Books reviewed in this article: Helen Macbeth and Paul Collinson (eds.) Human Population Dynamics: Cross‐Disciplinary Perspectives Jane Menken, Ann K. Blanc, and Cynthia B. Lloyd (eds.) Training and Support of Developing‐Country Population Scientists: A Panel Report Erin Phelps, Frank F. Furstenberg Jr., and Anne Colby (eds.) Looking at Lives: Amer...

Books reviewed in this article: Laurel Bossen, Chinese Women and Rural Development: Sixty Years of Change in Lu Village, Yunnan Fabrizio Butera and Gabriel Mugny (EDS.), Social Influence in Social Reality: Promoting Individual and Social Change Harold Coward and Daniel C. Maguire (EDS.), Visions of a New Earth: Religious Perspectives on Population,...

Abstract The objective of this research is to examine,the association between,social organization and reproductive behavior in one,setting in sub-Saharan Africa. The particular focus is on the effects of social organization on the diffusion of innovative reproductive ideas and behaviors. Social diffusion is assumed,to be strongly affected by patter...

In a Comment published in the Autumn 2000 issue of this journal, Mr Ghulam Soomro1 takes issue with our recent article in Population and Development Review.2 Although Mr Soomro is highly critical of our article, we are pleased that he has read the article carefully and made the effort to write an extended comment. We are not prepared, however, to c...

The principal aim of this study is to assess the strength in Pakistan of a set of hypothesized obstacles to practicing contraception. Survey data are analyzed that were collected in Punjab province in 1996 and that contain unusually detailed measurement of various perceived costs of practicing contraception, as well as focused measurement of fertil...

Abstract Recent trends in fertility and contraceptive prevalence indicate that the marital fertility transition in Pakistan, which has been anticipated for three de- cades, has begun in the 1990s. Before that decade, the total fertility rate had exceeded six births per woman for at least three decades, and fewer than 10 per- cent of married women p...

Abstract Fertility has declined substantially in developing countries in the period since 1960, primarily as the result of increases in contraceptiveprevalence. Little dispute isfound on this point, but considerable debate has arisen about the causes of the increase in contraceptive prevalence. One unresolved issue is the causal contribu- tion of c...

Unmet need for family planning has been a core concept in international population discourse for several decades. This article reviews the history of unmet need and the development of increasingly refined methods of its empirical measurement and delineates the main questions that have been raised about unmet need during the past decade, some of whi...

Abstract Theories of the fertility transition now routinely reserve a place for diffusion effects. Two fundamental behavioral mechanisms account for such effects: social learning and social influence. Social learning refers to the acquisition of information from others. The information might have to do with a new technology or with the health, soci...

The prevalence of unmet need for family planning is a primary justification for family planning programs, but the causes of unmet need have not been much explored. This article investigates four explanations for unmet need: (1) as an artifact of inaccurate measurement of fertility preferences and contraceptive practice; (2) as a reflection of weakl...

Data from a 1993 survey in the Philippines indicate that, in the aggregate, men and women have similar views of contraception. For example, 72% of husbands and 77% of wives strongly approved of contraception, and at least half believed that relatives and friends approved (although men were less likely than women to think so). At the couple level, h...

PIP: Explanations of the fertility transition in Costa Rica, as elsewhere in developing societies, have stressed the impacts of socioeconomic changes on the demand for children and of increased supply of family planning services. This paper goes beyond this demand-supply paradigm and examines the additional causal contribution of the "contagion" of...

Social demographers must take seriously the challenge to dominant theoretical paradigms that is posed by biosocial models. Accumulating empirical evidence documents the significant contribution of biological variables to the determination of social behaviors, including demographic behaviors. The simplest biosocial models may prove inadequate in soc...

The book has three aims: to document with maximum precision the timing, magnitude, and nature of fertility change. Having established the demographic facts, the second aim is to assess alternative explanations. It reviews social and economic changes and their possible links to reduced demand or need for children. The focus then shifts to considerat...

This article assesses whether Taiwan's rapid fertility transition over the period 1960–1980 was facilitated by interpersonal diffusion. Annual data on some 361 areal units are available; these support the estimation of dynamic fixed-effect models of marital fertility. The statistical models take aim at the principal empirical prediction of diffusio...

We are grateful to Dr Bittles for his comment calling attention to an important biosocial variable namely the biological relationship between spouses and agree that this variable should be incorporated in analyses of infant and early childhood mortality in those societies where consanguineous marriages are common. In fact the Egyptian data that wer...

In this article we use a simple mathematical model to study the implications for fertility transition of the diffusion of birth-control practices through social interaction. The model proposed is dynamic and deterministic. The simulations demonstrate that interaction diffusion can make potentially large contributions to fertility declines. These co...

The authors describe the living arrangements of the elderly in the Philippines. They find that "only a small fraction of the Filipino elderly are isolated from close kin; however, it is not certain that their living arrangements are favourable for their overall well-being. In many cases of co-residence, the flow of support is from the elderly paren...

This research examines determinants of infant and child mortality in rural Egypt, primarily the effects of household economic status and the availability of health services. Certain features of the health service environment affect survival in the neonatal period. In early childhood, survival chances improve markedly as income increases and if the...

The temptation to equate the status and well being of the elderly with their living arrangements is resisted. Micro rather than macro correlates of living arrangements in the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand are examined specifically to determine the extent to which the elderly live along, live only with their spouse, or live with at le...

This report examines the relationship between reproductive behavior and child survivalin Egypt. The relationship is of fundamental importance to an understanding of demographic dynamics and for the formulation of population policies. Using Egyptian data from 1975-80, it was found that weaning children in infancy increases ths risk of death for chil...

This research joins sociological and demographic traditions in a study of villages as contexts for contraceptive behavior in rural Egypt. Using survey data collected in the early 1980s, we explore the effects of village, household, and individual characteristics on contraceptive use and expectations about future use. The analysis demonstrates clear...

Differentials in the probability of pregnancy loss are examined using pregnancy history data from eight WFS surveys in developing countries. Multiple logistic regression equations are estimated. The probability of loss varies substantially over the reproductive career. Both higher-order pregnancies and those conceived at older ages are more likely...

This article uses household-level economic and fertility survey data to examine the relationship between household income and child survival in Egypt. Income has little effect on infant mortality but is inversely related to mortality in early childhood. The relationship persists with other associated socioeconomic variables controlled. The mechanis...

Estimates of levels and differentials of pregnancy loss are presented for 40 developing countries participating in the World Fertility Survey (WFS) program. Judged against agreed-upon levels of spontaneous loss in human populations, WFS surveys measured from 50 to 80 percent of recognizable losses. The coverage of induced abortions appears to be mu...