The Legacies of Context: Contraceptive Choice in Nang Rong, Thailand

Jeffrey Edmeades, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

This paper focuses on the influence that past and current household and community contexts exert on decisions regarding method of fertility control, with particular attention paid to the ways in which this changes over the life course. To examine these issues, I use individual, household, and community information collected over a period of sixteen years in Nang Rong district, Northeastern Thailand. Specifically, I examine the ways in which current contraceptive behavior is influenced by both present and past individual, household, and community characteristics. Preliminary results indicate that contraceptive choices are influenced by both current and past contextual factors in addition to current individual characteristics, suggesting that contraceptive models that focus exclusively on either past or current influences on contraceptive choices overlook an important aspect of the relationship between contextual factors and individual behavior.