Corruption: Fertility, electricity and television: is there a link? Evidence from Pakistan, 1990-2012

Luca Tasciotti (), Farooq Sulehria and Natascha Wagner

No 220, Working Papers from Department of Economics, SOAS University of London, UK

Abstract: Pakistan has the second highest fertility rate in South Asia with every women giving birth to 3.4 children on average. This paper uses three waves of the Demographic Health Survey data to empirically analyse fertility trends in Pakistan between 1990 and 2013; accounting for wealth and the use of contraceptives and birth spacing, this paper looks at three additional pathways for reducing fertility: (i) electrification, (ii) access to TV and (iii) family planning commercials broadcasted on television. The pooled regression results suggest that the direct effect that the access to electricity has on fertility is limited. In contrast, access to television had a significant effect in reducing fertility rates, especially after the 2000s. To further disentangle the contribution of television to the fertility decline, we assess the role of family planning commercials broadcasted on television. We provide complementary qualitative evidence on the content and evolution of Pakistani soap-operas and we argue that the role models, the typology of households and the messages conveyed by the soap-operas are possible drivers of the fertility decline. We show that a similar conclusion cannot be drawn in the case of radio. Our findings suggest that in one of worldís most populous country access to modern role models via soap-operas might be one of the most powerful fertility-reducing interventions.

Keywords: Fertility; electricity; television; Pakistan; panel analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28
Date: 2019-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul, nep-dev and nep-ene
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