Family Planning and Fertility Behavior: Evidence from Twentieth Century Malaysia

Kimberly Singer Babiarz, Jiwon Lee, Grant Miller, Tey Nai Peng and Christine Valente
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Kimberly Singer Babiarz: Stanford University
Jiwon Lee: Pomona College
Grant Miller: Stanford University
Tey Nai Peng: University of Malaysia

No 470, Working Papers from Center for Global Development

Abstract: There is longstanding debate about the contribution of family planning programs to fertility decline. Studying the staggered introduction of family planning across Malaysia during the 1960s and 1970s, we find modest responses in fertility behavior. Higher (but not lower) parity birth hazards declined by one-quarter—but imply only a 5 percent decline in the overall annual probability of birth. Age at marriage rose by 0.48 years, but birth spacing conditional on this did not otherwise change. Overall, Malaysia’s total fertility rate declined by about one quarter birth under family planning, explaining only about 10 percent of the national fertility decline between 1960 and 1988. Our findings are consistent with growing evidence that global fertility decline is predominantly due to underlying changes in the demand for children.

JEL-codes: J12 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2017-12-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-sea
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cgd:wpaper:470

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