BOOK REVIEW Burden of Inequality Alia Ahmed, Women and Fertility in Bangladesh, Sage Publications, 1991, pp. 183, Rs. 185. Bangladesh is a chronic case of the link between population density and poverty expressed in land hunger, low per capita income, subsistence level consumption and actual unemployment. When social welfare and health programmes have helped to bring down the death rate, Ahmed considers it relevant to focus on the fertility behaviour of the population. Rather than looking at the question crudely^ Ahmed mediates it by looking at population growth within the framework of the age structure and marriage patterns of groups of women to determine fertility levels. Using comparative field areas, developed (where health and family welfare are available) and underdeveloped (where these services are absent) she shows how: (a) fertility levels have reduced in the period 1972-83 due to change in marriage age, and (b) that lower fertility is shown by the higher age groups where desired levels of fertility have been achieved. The developed area shows a total lower rate in comparison to the undeveloped area. Ahmed has also looked at socio-economic indicators to explain changes in fertility, such as women's literacy, per capita income, life expectancy, infant mortality, age of marriage and the female labour force participation rate. In all these areas of social change and progress, Bangladesh has not even reached a threshold level, as in the case of female literacy at 60% and proportion of women never married before the age 20 at 80%. Ahmed rightly indicates that the pace of socio-economic development is too slow and therefore Bangladeshi women cannot wait. She is also critical of family planning programmes because of a lack of political will, administrative weakness and a poor network of health facilities. She poses a question that we are all familiar with: can measures to motivate people to control birth be successful when the conditions which motivate people to have fewer children have received scant attention? Ahmed advocates 'selective intervention' to resolve the deadlock, by identifying the socio-economic indicators which are most directly Social Scientist, Vol. 19, Nos. 9-10, October-November, 1991