IFS/STICERD/UCL Development Work in Progress Seminar & IFS/STICERD/UCL Development Work in Progress Seminar

Subjective Expectations and Demand for Contraception

Aureo De Paula (University College London), joint with Christine Valente (Bristol) and Grant Miller (Stanford)

Thursday 28 October 2021 12:30 - 14:00

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About this event

One-quarter of married, fertile-age women in Sub-Saharan Africa report not wanting a pregnancy and yet do not use contraceptives. The presentation will cover both our completed project on “Subjective Expectations and Demand for Contraception” in Mozambique and our plans to expand the analysis to Nigeria. In Mozambique, we collect detailed data on women’s subjective probabilistic beliefs and estimate a structural model of contraceptive choices. Our results indicate that costly interventions like eliminating supply constraints would only modestly increase contraceptive use. Alternatively, increasing partners’ approval of methods, aligning partners’ fertility preferences with women’s, and correcting women’s beliefs about pregnancy risk absent contraception have the potential to increase use considerably. Results from a within-subject experiment testing this last finding are highly consistent with the structural estimates. We will be expanding the analysis to Nigeria on a larger sample, including an extended questionnaire and interviews with partners. We hope to obtain feedback on these and other aspects.

This seminar series is jointly organized by the IFS, STICERD, and UCL.

IFS/STICERD/UCL Development Economics Work In Progress seminars are held on Thursdays in term time at 14:00-15:00, at the IFS, unless specified otherwise.

Seminar organisers: Oriana Bandiera (STICERD, LSE), Imran Rasul (UCL), Britta Augsburg (IFS) and Jonathan Weigel (LSE).

For further information please contact Britta Augsburg: britta_a@ifs.org.uk.

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