Household bargaining and excess fertility: An experimental study in Zambia.

By Nava Ashraf, Erica Field, Jean Lee. 2014

376 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We posit that household decision-making over fertility is characterized by moral hazard since most contraception can only be perfectly observed by the woman. Using an experiment in Zambia that varied whether women were given access to contraceptives alone or with their husbands, we find that women given access with their husbands were 19 percent less likely to seek family planning services, 25 percent less likely to use concealable contraception, and 27 percent more likely to give birth. However, women given access to contraception alone report a lower subjective well-being, suggesting a psycho-social cost of making contraceptives more concealable.

Subfields: Demography, Gender Studies, Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f924b47e89de602ed05550cdd501e4c61434c59f

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Citations in the corpus

Education, Marriage, and Fertility: Long-Term Evidence from a Female Stipend Program in Bangladesh (2017, background): “For example, Ashraf et al. (2014) show that the extent to which contraception methods are observable has an important implication on household bargaining.”
Bargaining over Babies: Theory, Evidence, and Policy Implications (2019, background): “8 One reason why gaps in desired fertility are especially large in developing countries may be maternal mortality risk; see Ashraf et al. (2018). 9 Testa, Cavalli, and Rosina (2014) use recent Italian data and find that disagreement has a particularly strong negative effect on fertility at higher pa”
Families in Macroeconomics (2016, neutral): “…spouse was not aware of any income they had received the preceding week. an See in particular Mazzocco (2007) and Voena (2015). ao For example, Ashraf et al. (2014) show that women in Zambia hide the use of birth control from their husbands when given the chance. ap See Anderson and Baland…”
Gender Differences in Preferences, Intra-Household Externalities, and Low Demand for Improved Cookstoves (2013, result): “These results build on an empirical literature suggesting that aspects of intra-household decision-making can lead to inefficiencies (Udry et al., 1995; Udry, 1996; Anderson & Baland, 2002; Ashraf, 2009; de Mel et al., 2009; Ashraf et al., 2010; Fafchamps et al., 2011; Köhlin et al., 2011).”
Labor market opportunities and women's decision making power within households (2016, background): “DC f em,m = (C f em,m,2002 E f em,m,2002 ) (5)”
Negotiating a Better Future: How Interpersonal Skills Facilitate Intergenerational Investment* (2018, positive): “Empirical work in this literature has typically focused on bargaining and investment problems between spouses (for example, Udry, 1996; Ashraf, 2009; Ashraf et al., 2014; Browning et al., 1994; and Browning and Chiappori, 1998).”
The Global Demography of Aging: Facts, Explanations, Future (2016, positive): “…access to contraceptives with their husbands had lower contraceptive use and more births than women who were given access to contraceptives alone, suggesting that intrahousehold tensions regarding fertility may be an important factor when determining contraceptive uptake (Ashraf et al., 2014).”
Financing from Family and Friends (2016, positive): “(6) Deepening : Family finance can be indispensable for projects with severe agency problems.”
Measuring and Changing Control: Women's Empowerment and Targeted Transfers (2016, positive): “these models to study household decision-making in a variety of specific contexts, such as the allocation of resources to children, labour supply, and fertility decisions (Hoddinott and Haddad, 1995; Chiappori et al., 2002; Blundell et al., 2005, 2007; Ashraf et al., 2014; Voena, 2015).”