Chapter 20: Contraceptive access, fertility and well-being in lower income countries

Pauline Rossi and Christine Valente
Additional contact information
Christine Valente: University of Bristol

No 2026-06, Working Papers from Center for Research in Economics and Statistics

Abstract: What is the effect of contraceptive access on fertility and well-being in lower income countries? We start by presenting the long-standing debate on the importance of contraception as a driver of fertility decline, the underlying theoretical arguments and the implications for policies. Next, we review the empirical evidence, from older studies evaluating the effect of historical family planning programs to more recent randomized controlled trials in various contexts. We conclude that there is no strong evidence that simply making contraceptives more affordable and more available substantially reduces fertility and improves well-being. However, we argue that the limited effects of contraceptive supply interventions to date do not imply that all pregnancies are desired and that there is no room for public policy. Finally, we warn against extrapolating the limited effects of increasing supply to forecast the impact of decreasing supply—these are likely to be asymmetrical. This is especially important given the downward trend in international aid.

Keywords: Contraception; Fertility; Well-being; Lower income countries; Supply interventions; Family planning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2026-07-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://crest.science/RePEc/wpstorage/2026-06.pdf CREST working paper version (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Server closed connection without sending any data back

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:crs:wpaper:2026-06

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Center for Research in Economics and Statistics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Secretariat General () and Murielle Jules Maintainer-Email : murielle.jules@ensae.Fr.