The Matlab Family Planning–Health Services Programme, Bangladesh (icddr,b)

Since October 1977, icddr,b (International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh) has run a door-to-door family planning and basic maternal/child health programme covering roughly 100,000 people in half of Matlab sub-district's villages, with the other half of villages left as a non-randomised comparison area.

Door-to-door contraceptive counselling and supply of pills, condoms, IUDs, sterilisation and injectables, alongside basic maternal and child health services.

The original 1982 evaluation found an ~25% fertility decline in treatment villages, with about a third of eligible couples adopting contraception. The 35-year PNAS follow-up found children of programme mothers were about 1cm taller by ages 8–14, with higher survival rates and better cognitive test scores and schooling than children in comparison villages; Bangladesh's national life expectancy rose from 47 to 72 years over the same period, with family planning cited as one contributing factor among several.

The 35-year follow-up found no improvement — and in some measures a slight decline — in enrolled women's own personal health, household wealth and decision-making power, even as their children's outcomes improved markedly, indicating benefits accrued more to the next generation than to the women themselves.