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Title: Family Planning and Development: Aggregate Effects of Contraceptive Use

Author(s): Tiago Cavalcanti, Georgi Kocharkov and Cezar Santos

Publication Date: January 2020

Keyword(s): Abortion, Contraception, education and Income per capita

Programme Area(s): Macroeconomics and Growth

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 longrun living standards than policies that subsidise basic education.

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Bibliographic Reference

Cavalcanti, T, Kocharkov, G and Santos, C. 2020. 'Family Planning and Development: Aggregate Effects of Contraceptive Use'. London, Centre for Economic Policy Research. https://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=14329