The Indian family welfare program seeks to promote the two-child norm by offering couples the opportunity to choose voluntarily the family planning method best suited to their needs.

Information on the determinants of contraceptive failure and the effects or outcome of such failure has important implications for the study of fertility as well as for women's health.

Change in the size of a population takes place due to births, deaths and migration.

On the 16th of March 1998, at the final hearing of the writ petition filed by the All India Democratic Women's Association and the faculty of the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, the Drug Controller of India gave a written commitment to

A woman would prefer to prevent an unwanted pregnancy rather than having an abortion or carrying the pregnancy to term. No amount of legal or religious restrictions, social stigma or lack of access to professional care can stop her if she decides to seek termination of an unplanned pregnancy.

Recognizing the urgency of containing its population, the Government of India has consistently increased the budget outlay for the family planning program with each Five-Year Plan from Rs. 6.5 million in its first five-year plan to Rs.65,000 million in the eighth five-year plan.

The paper uses the National Family Health Survey (NFHS, 1992-93) data to examine the extent to which sex preferences have constrained the success of the family planning programme and inhibited the acceptance of contraception in the different states of the country.

The single most important problem that India is facing now is the uncontrolled growth of population. In spite of availability of a wide range of contraceptives and mass media campaigns and IEC programs, the population control remains a distant dream to achieve.

This study tests the hypothesis that, in Nepal, measures of ideal family size mask an underlying preference for sons, making some people willing to have families larger than their ideal. Existing evidence suggests that men are likely to have stronger preferences for sons than are women.

In 1978, the Bangladesh family planning program launched a national program of outreach services that continues to the present. Young married women were hired and trained to visit women in their homes, offer contraceptive services, provide information, and support sustained use over time.