All five countries of South Asia, containing over one-fourth of the developing world's population, increased the effort levels of their national family planning programs over the 17 years from 2 to 1989. However, 30 measures of effort show much disparity among the five in the amount increase and in variability across the kinds of effort. The higher the overall effort, score the less variability, and the better the scores for service arrangements and for the availability of contraceptive methods. All these results parallel differences among the countries in rising contraceptive use and in fertility decline. 'The five countries also differ sharply in their likelihood of reaching replacement fertility by the Year 2015. A variety of predictive indicators, combined a single composite index, suggest that only Sri Lanka is certain to reach that goal, that only is "probable" to do so, that Bangladesh is 'possible,' and that Nepal and Pakistan are unlikely.' The actual outcomes will reflect both the degree of program effort and the pace of modernization; in any case very large increments to population size are built into the age the vast body of family planning research there c few attempts to measure program inputs dependently of program outputs. There is however a series of investigations, in 1972, 1982, 1989, that assesses the effort levels, or strengths, of all large scale programs (Mauldin Ross, 1991). This article uses information m this series as it bears on South Asia, to sent detailed country scores and to discuss are developments.

The purposes of this discussion we consider the Asia to include the five countries of Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Dr social and economic conditions, combined high fertility and rapid rates of population with, have led each of these countries to adopt population policies designed to reduce fertility and rates of population growth. Policies to reduce rates of population growth were adopted relatively; early by each country, in the region, but implementation of the programs has varied in intensity and effectiveness. The effort scores presented here depict numerous facets of these changes.