Bangladesh has experienced a rapid national decline in fertility in recent decades; however, fertility rates vary considerably at the sub-national level (i.e., by division). These variations are expected to be even more pronounced at lower geographic levels (e.g., district level). However, routinely conducted demographic health surveys are designed to provide national estimates and typically lack sufficient sample sizes to produce reliable estimates of fertility rates at finer administrative units, particularly district-level age-specific fertility rates.

Data extracted from the 2014 Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey are used to derive direct estimates of age-specific fertility rates and associated smoothed standard errors. These serve as inputs for developing a small area model, expressed within a hierarchical Bayesian framework and fitted using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation. The model accounts for variation across different levels—women’s age groups, divisions, and districts. The modeling results show substantial reductions in the estimated standard errors and provide consistent estimates of fertility at the detailed district-by-age level.

Significant differences in fertility levels are observed both within and between districts, as well as across divisions. Fertility rates are notably higher in the Sylhet division and among women aged 20–24 years. Geo-spatial maps of fertility rates are used to visualise these district-level variations and to identify hot and cold spots, allowing for more targeted local-level planning and evidence-based policy decision-making aimed at further reducing fertility rates in Bangladesh.

Unnati Rani Saha obtained her Bachelor’s (Honours) and MSc in Statistics from Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh, and her PhD from the Department of Econometrics and Operations Research (EOR), Tilburg School of Economics and Management. She has served as a researcher at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), and at The Population Council in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Dr. Saha is currently an Adjunct Faculty member (rank of Associate Professor) of Public Health at R. P. Shaha University, Dhaka, Bangladesh, and is involved in leprosy research at the Department of Public Health, Erasmus MC, the Netherlands.

She is an experienced researcher in Demography and Public Health with a demonstrated track record in both quantitative and qualitative research in Bangladesh and the Netherlands. Her research interests include family planning, fertility, birth intervals, maternal and child health and nutrition, social epidemiology, and health systems research. She is also skilled in advanced statistical and econometric methods, micro-simulation, and spatial analysis.

Her work is driven by a desire to better understand public health problems and their social determinants, the processes through which such problems arise and can be prevented, the design of interventions, and the evaluation of their impacts—what works, what does not, and the policy conclusions that follow. She serves as an associate editorial board member of BMC Public Health and as an external thesis adviser for students in the Master of Public Health (MPH) program at the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT), Amsterdam.

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