The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze fertility and family planning in a developing country setting. High fertility and low contraceptive use, characteristics common to developing populations, are associated with high rates of maternal/child mortality and low levels of education and socio-economic status. Maintaining some of the highest fertility rates and lowest contraceptive use rates in the Western Hemisphere, Guatemala serves as the setting for an analysis of contemporary developing country fertility and family planning dynamics. More-over, because Guatemala is characterized by extreme regional variation in fertility, family planning services and development, analyses of reproductive health require regional disaggregation of the population. The dissertation is divided into three main substantive chapters each addressing different aspects of fertility and family planning. Through a comparison of period, cohort and tempo-adjusted period measures of fertility, the first analysis identifies the macro-level indicators that best express the fertility behavior of the country. The second analysis examines contraceptive use and intent over time using classification trees to categorize women of reproductive age and identify at-risk sub-groups. The last portion of the research focuses on a particularly remote, environmentally sensitive region, where fertility levels are extremely high, to examine the relationship between fertility levels and land use/labor characteristics. The data used for these analyses come from Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data (1987, 1995 and 1998/99) and the 2002 Reproductive and Health Survey (RHS) data. The findings highlight the significant impact of period factors on fertility levels and the importance of geographically disaggregating these metrics to enhance understanding of fertility change. The significant role of ethnicity, socio-economic status and region of residence in determining contraceptive use and intention is also established. Finally, the significance of land use and labor variables in the presence of socio-demographic and ideational factors supports the positive correlation between children as labor and fertility levels and challenges established theories of investment in livestock as a component of reduced fertility