ABSTRACT

Several studies of family planning and fertility in the 1950s and 1960s thoroughly documented the greater degree of access to birth control services and techniques that higher class couples had relative to those of lower status. A family planning program, whose primary purpose is to assist couples to avoid unwanted pregnancies, should address itself to identifying the barriers which prevent couples in all socioeconomic groups from successfully controlling their fertility, and to developing activities aimed at overcoming these barriers. In order to focus on a health service program which is to be utilized in large part by poor persons, it is first necessary for program planning purposes to define who are the "poor". Some empirical support for the applicability of the bureau of labor statistics lower minimum budget level to estimating the need for organized family planning services is to be found in the utilization pattern of Planned Parenthood clinics.