Family Planning and Women’s Economic Empowerment: Incentive Effects and Direct Effects among Malaysian Women

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 471, Working Papers from Center for Global Development

Abstract: Although family planning programs can improve women’s welfare directly through changes in realized fertility, they may also have important incentive effects by increasing parents’ investments in girls not yet fertile. Exploiting the staggered implementation of family planning programs in Malaysia during the 1960s and 1970s among girls of varying ages, we study these potential incentive effects, finding that family planning may have raised raise girls’ educational attainment substantially. We also find that these early investments are linked to gains in women’s paid labor at prime working ages and to greater support for women’s elderly parents (a marker for women’s bargaining power within the household). Notably, these incentive effects may be larger than the direct effects of family planning alone.

JEL-codes: I26 J13 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2017-12-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-sea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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