DOES WOMENS LITERACY AFFECT DESIRED FERTILITY AND CONTRACEPTIVE USE IN RURAL-URBAN PAKISTAN

The 1984-85 Pakistan Contraceptive Prevalence Survey showed that urban wives had more than twice the literacy rate of rural wives. The prese nt study explored the relationship of the rural-urban gap in female li teracy to differences in contraceptive use. In rural areas, literacy d id not increase women's perceptions of having reached a 'sufficient' n umber of living children, although the opposite was true for urban are as. Yet rural women with an 'insufficient' number of living children w ere more likely to use contraception if they were literate, as did the ir urban counterparts. Thus, raising the literacy rate in rural Pakist an would not narrow the rural-urban gap in contraception to cease chil dbearing but would narrow the rural-urban gap in contraception used to space wanted births further apart. Recommendations for government pol icy are made.