Controlling population growth in Sri Lanka: perceptions,policies and strategies

Sri Lanka has been an oft-cited example in the demographic literature of developing countries over the past 4 decades. Despite its low level of per capita income, Sri Lanka has managed to achieve the lowest level of fertility in South Asia. Sri Lanka's population policies, especially with regard to fertility, have been rated as strong by some writers. The evolution of policies on population growth in Sri Lanka is described in the following sections: the problem of population growth, strategies for controlling population growth, the period of indirect government participation from 1948 to 1965, policy change during 1965-77, 1977 as the beginning of a new era of increasing government commitment to domestic population polices, and strategy changes from 1989 onwards. During this current, most recent, phase of population policy in Sri Lanka, the government has focused upon satisfying the demand for various family planning methods, demand which has been created by a well-promoted fertility control program during the preceding phases of policy implementation. Greater emphasis is simultaneously being given to improving reproductive health.     

Sri Lanka: sterilization bonus announced in Sri Lanka; new CBD experiments in Sri Lanka; orchids and family planning

The government of Sri Lanka will give a minimum bonus of SRs 100 ($US6.00) to anyone voluntarily being sterilized. Women will be given 7 days leave and men 3. Many public and private corporations pay sterilization bonuses; the new bonus was set to compete with generous maternity benefits. The average daily wage is about SRs 120. Currently the demand for sterilization is greater than the health services' ability to meet it. Depo-provera is becoming increasingly popular in Sri Lanka, especially among the Muslim communities. The Family Planning Association of Sri Lanka is to test new forms of social marketing of contraceptives to provide wider coverage through community-based distribution. One system will use the route of a commercial firm, Reckitt and Coleman Ltd., and another system will use a network of provincial organizers, commission agents, and local retailers. To create an awareness in young people of their responsibility toward society the Family Planning Association organized an orchid cultivation and family planning propaganda project. 40 young boys are being taught orchid culture and the benefits of family planning. Orchids can be grown in the back yard without any capital investment. There is a steady market for the orchids, and the training program lasts 6 months for each cohort of boys.     

Soap operas,women, and the nation: Sri Lankan women’s interpretations of home-grown mega teledramas

This essay examines the place of home-grown soap operas, known as mega teledramas, in the lives of women in the South Asian island nation of Sri Lanka. While female audiences are often vilified for their consumption of mega teledramas in Sri Lanka, this study finds that these narratives have assumed a social role in women’s friendship networks, becoming a shared cultural source in their everyday lives. The representations in the mega teledramas were offering a range of diverse meanings to the women and their readings of women protagonists, central to the narratives, were intrinsically linked with nationally constructed notions of womanhood.     

Escape route to dependency? Female migration from Sri Lanka to the Middle East

This article looks at labor migration with the sex component turned upside down, where the woman leaves hearth and home in search of work in distant lands. The sending country is Sri Lanka, and the women migrate as maids to Arab households in the Gulf area. Labor migration must be understood in the context of the economic and social development that has made migration possible, or rather pushed it forward. Today, the export of labor is the 2nd biggest source of foreign earnings for Sri Lanka, and females constitute the largest single group of labor migrants. There is 1 clear aspect of female migration: it is almost without exception the poorest strata of society that send their women to the Gulf as housemaids. 3 factors tend to reduce the value of wages earned in the Middle East: 1) for a majority of the migrants there are high social costs involved, 2) there are high transaction costs just to obtain a Gulf job, and 3) performing paid housework tends to be regarded as a low-status occupation and is less attractive to households that have alternative means of income. Not only are the migrant women themselves exposed to a very different society, with different values and ways of living, but also the whole community at home gets a concept of "abroad." The Sri Lankan government expects the contingent of female migrants to grow, though against this is the fact that Sri Lanka now faces stronger competition in female labor exports from other Asian countries.     

Demographic and socio-economic situation in a new settlement in Sri Lanka: a study of System C of the Mahaweli Development Programme

"The accelerated Mahaweli Development Programme is one of the most recent and largest multi-purpose development programmes in Sri Lanka, and System C is a major agricultural settlement that has been developed under this programme.... This paper presents the findings of a study that was carried out in System C, with a view to collecting certain important baseline demographic and socioeconomic characteristics." Information is provided on spatial distribution, number and size of families, sex ratio, age distribution, family characteristics, and seasonal variations in population.     

Family planning communication between spouses in Sri Lanka

Drawing on data from a national follow-up survey of 2310 currently married women aged 15-49 conducted in Sri Lanka in 1985, this study examines patterns of family planning communication between spouses, social and economic factors related to those patterns, and the consistency between spouses in their responses to questions about family planning attitudes and practice. The results of the analysis indicate a high degree of family planning communication between spouses in Sri Lanka. The communication, however, varied according to couples' number of living children and to wives' age, education, place of residence, religion, and work status. Multivariate logistic regression generally confirms that older women, those with little or no education, those living on tea estates, and Muslims were less likely to communicate with their husbands on family planning matters than were women in other age, education, residence, and religion categories. These findings suggest the existence of social and cultural obstacles to communication between spouses about family planning matters in Sri Lanka. Among the 577 pairs of spouses whose answers were compared for consistency, a large proportion of wives reported hearing about male contraceptive methods directly from their husbands, and a large proportion of husbands reported hearing about female methods from their wives. These findings are a reminder that both spouses are potentially important sources of information about contraception.     

Sri Lankan female domestic workers overseas: mothering their children from a distance

Sri Lanka is one of three countries in Asia, along with the Philippines and Indonesia, where women migrants constitute between 60 and 70% of legal migrants; these female migrants are mainly employed overseas as domestic workers. Since the 1980s, the out-migration of Sri Lankan females for employment abroad surpassed that of males and the major destination has been countries in the Middle East. The majority of these women are married and have at least one child; they leave their children in the care of other family members in their absence. While they usually make arrangements to accommodate the spatial separation forced by migration, their migration poses many challenges to themselves and their children left behind. Recently, the issue of children left behind by migrant mothers has attracted growing attention from policy makers in Sri Lanka. Since the social and emotional ramifications of mothering from a distance and how these mothers cope with them are inadequately investigated, this article uses data collected from a 2008 survey of 400 Sri Lankan female migrant families to examine the effects of mothers’ migration on how they are mothering their children from a distance, and how they perceive the effects on their children. The article concludes with some suggested policy recommendations.     

Identifying Social Indicators for Sustainability Assessment of CCU Technologies: A Modified Multi-criteria Decision Making

Social Indicators Research - This paper analyses the trend and changes in Sri Lanka’s multidimensional poverty before the ethnic war in 2007, the transition through 2009 and after the war in...     

A hazards-Model analysis of the covariates of infant and child mortality in Sri Lanka

The purpose of this paper is twofold: (a) to provide a complete self-contained exposition of estimating life tables with covariates through the use of hazards models, and (b) to illustrate this technique with a substan-tive analysis of child mortality in Sri Lanka, thereby demonstrating that World Fertility Survey data are a valuable source for the study of child mortality. We show that life tables with covariates can be easily estimated with standard computer packages designed for analysis of contingency tables. The substantive analysis confirms and supplements an earlier study of infant and child mortality in Sri Lanka by Meegama. Those factors found to be strongly associated with mortality are mother’s and father’s education, time period of birth, urban/rural/estate residence, ethnicity, sex, birth order, age of the mother at the birth, and type of toilet facility.     

Demographic and Health Survey--1993

The author briefly outlines some of the major findings of the 1993 Sri Lanka Demographic and Health Survey. Information is provided on fertility, family planning, infant and child mortality, maternal and child health, breast-feeding, and nutritional status of children.     

On the theory and measurement of the determinants of mortality

This article develops a model of mortality that shows how biological, demographic, and environmental factors interact to affect an individual's probability of dying. To illustrate the usefulness of the model, we derive from it (as special cases) the Brass system of model life tables and the proportional-hazard mortality model and apply a logit version of the model to analyze the determinants of child mortality in Sri Lanka.     

Sri Lanka: current status of family planning

In Sri Lanka the family planning program is closely related to socioeconomic and cultural variables. The expectation is that in the near future family planning will be included as a component of a network of social services. The official program is a response to the economic necessities and welfare demands of individuals and families. The method of family planning most frequently requested is female sterilization, and no attempts are being made to direct people to other methods. 12 United Nations Fund for Population Activities assisted projects have provided the framework and basis for the institutional coverage of family planning activities in Sri Lanka. However, the experience of these projects revealed a lack of facilities, shortage of personnel and management inadequacies, all related to the delivery of family planning services. The following steps are suggested as a means of overcoming the current problems and expanding the program: 1) establish a pattern of interacting relationship between the mass media, community health education and the available services; 2) provide an operational approach to program management, monitoring and periodic reviews of the program; 3) involve the private sector health facilities; and 4) incur additional capital cost to increase the capacity for delivery of better health facilities and personnel.     

A note on synthethic cohort estimates of average desired family size

Abstract This note considers the problem of estimating average desired family size from parity-specific data on proportions wanting another child. Three procedures proposed in the literature are reviewed and shown to give seriously biased estimates, when women implement their fertility preferences. An alternative procedure is proposed which overcomes most of the deficiencies of previous methods. An example from Sri Lanka illustrates the fact that the differences among the methods may be quite substantial.     

Young women's work and family formation in Sri Lanka

"Patterns of family formation in Sri Lanka resemble those of wealthier nations, with late marriage, delayed childbearing, and moderately low fertility. This article addresses two questions: How have these family formation patterns emerged in the absence of the normally expected levels of economic development? And what activities have occupied young women in the premarital, prechildbearing period? Answers are suggested by data from three sources: the 1981 census; a set of focus-group discussions on the rights, obligations, and aspirations of young women related to marriage, work, childbearing, and child care; and a sample survey of 1,535 women of ages 15-30 in Kalutara District. The article describes the interplay of socioeconomic and familial forces that have affected the status of young Sri Lankan women."     

Middle East migration and health

"Labour migration to the Middle East from Sri Lanka has been increasing in recent times. Such a situation has not only demographic, but economic and social implications.... [The author investigates the] impact on the health situation of the migrant workers as well as on the families that they have left behind...by reviewing [the literature] and by making use of the author's own personal experiences as a physician in the Middle East."     

ESCAP migration study gathers momentum

A comparative study is being conducted in the ESCAP (Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific) region on the relationships of migration and urbanization to development. The 1st stage of the study will entail the preparation of country reports on the census analysis of migration, urbanization and development. The 2nd stage will involve preparation of a series of national migration surveys. The 3rd phase will involve assisting member governments to formulate a comprehensive population redistribution policy as part of their national development planning. 1st-phase country reports have been completed in Sri Lanka, South Korea, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Migration in Sri Lanka has largely been rural-to-rural with little urbanization so far. The picture in South Korea has been the opposite, with rapid urbanization in the 1960s and 1970s; the government is hoping to divert some population to smaller cities away from Seoul. The pattern in the Philippines is 1 of urban primacy with the metropolis of Manila accounting for over 1/3 of the country's total population. Indonesia is characterized by a dense heartland in the Java-Bali regions. However, the rate of urbanization here has been slower. Migrants in all the countries studied are preponderantly young. The sex differential varies from country to country. The influence of migration on subsequent fertility is unknown.     

Emerging population issues among adolescents and youth

The authors "examine the emerging population issues of adolescents and youth [in Sri Lanka]. The demographic pressures have resulted in the expansion of the numbers in this age category which in turn has caused problems of employment creation. The educational expansion has brought about changes in the age at marriage and life styles, which in turn has created the need for greater attention on reproductive health issues among adolescents and youth."     

Aging of population and elderly care in Sri Lanka

"The main purpose of this paper is...to examine the trends [and] characteristics of the elderly population [in Sri Lanka] and to inquire into the status of elderly support and care.... There is considerable evidence to show that [the] mechanisms of family support and care of the elderly have weakened. There is an increasing demand for institutional support by the elderly. This paper attempts to identify some of the underlying reasons that have prompted the elderly to make the decision to move out of the family kinship network and seek institutional support."     

Asian-Pacific round of WFS activities

The primary aim of the World Fertility Survey (WFS) program is to assist countries to acquire the scientific information that will permit them to describe and interpret the fertility of their populations. A 2nd purpose is to increase national capacities for fertility and other demographic survey research, particularly in developing countries; while a 3rd objective is to collect and analyze data on fertility which are internationally standardized and therefore permit comparisons between 1 country and another. The WFS studies are generally single-round surveys of households selected to provide a national probability sample, with information collected from eligible women with the help of a carefully designed individual questionnaire. The recommended WFS questionnaire consists of 7 sections: 1) respondent's background; 2) maternity history; 3) contraceptive knowledge and use; 4) marriage history; 5) fertility regulation; 6) work history; and 7) current husband's background. For countries wishing to investigate certain topics in greater depth, various modules have been developed by WFS which can be incorporated into the questionnaire. So far, 35 developing countries and 17 developed countries have been participating in the WFS program, including 14 ESCAP countries. 11 of these countries (Bangladesh, Fiji, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Republic of Korea, Sri Lanka, and Thailand) have already completed their 1st report and many have begun activities with regard to the 2nd-stage analysis of the WFS data. 3 of these, Nepal; Sri Lanka; and Indonesia; have also held seminars to discuss the survey findings and further analyze the WFS data.     

A Multistate model of fecundability and sterility

This paper develops a multistate hazards model for estimating fecundability and sterility from data on waiting times to conception. Important features of the model include separate sterile and nonsterile states, a distinction between preexisting sterility and sterility that begins after initiation of exposure, and log-normally distributed fecundability among nonsterile couples. Application of the model to data on first birth intervals from Taiwan, Sri Lanka, and the Amish shows that heterogeneity in fecundability is statistically significant at most ages, but that preexisting sterility and new sterility are unimportant before age 40. These results suggest that sterility may not be an important determinant of natural fertility until later reproductive ages.