Family Planning and Development: Aggregate Effects of Contraceptive Use

Abstract

What is the role of family planning interventions on fertility, savings, human capital investment, and development? To examine this, endogenous unwanted fertility is embedded in an otherwise standard quantity-quality overlapping generations model of fertility and growth. The model features costly fertility control and families can (partially) insure against a fertility risk by using costly modern contraceptives. In the event of unexpected pregnancies, households can also opt to abort some pregnancies, at a cost. Given the number of children born, parents decide how much education to provide and how much to save out of their income. We fit the model to Kenyan data, implement several family planning policies and decompose their aggregate effects. Our results suggest that with a small government budget (say, up to 0.5 percent of GDP), family planning interventions might be more cost-effective in improving long-run living standards than policies that subsidise basic education.

The Fall in Global Fertility: A Quantitative Model

“…This point was made by demographers Enke (1960) and Davis (1967) at early stages of the global population control movement, and later by Becker (1992), who argued that family planning programs focused on increasing contraceptive usage are effective only when the value of having children is lowered. The result is also consistent with Cavalcanti, Kocharkov, and Santos (2017), who find that aggregate fertility is unresponsive to improved contraceptive access even though there are significant compositional differences between education groups.…”

To Pill or Not to Pill? Access to Emergency Contraception and Contraceptive Behaviour

“…On the other hand, Miller (2010) reports small effects on total fertility using the expansion of the Profamilia program in Colombia, but large gains from postponing first births. Miller and Valente (2016) show evidence of the substitutability between abortion and modern contraception in Nepal, while Cavalcanti, Kocharkov and Santos (2016) find larger positive welfare effects of subsidizing abortion than contraceptives.…”

The wife's protector: a quantitative theory linking contraceptive technology with the decline in marriage

“…Cavalcanti, Kocharkov, and Santos (2019) introduce unwanted births into a model of fertility decisions and growth, and show that family planning programs, which reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, can generate signi…cant gains in the educational attainments of children and hence GDP.…”