Family Planning and Ethnic Heritage: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

Graziella Bertocchi (), Arcangelo Dimico and Chiara Falco

No 1511, GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)

Abstract: Family planning is a critical issue in countries, particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa, where high fertility rates coexist with low contraceptive use alongside ad- verse perinatal outcomes. Using a combination of ethnographic, ecological, and folklore data, we investigate the role played in this context by postpartum sex- ual abstinence, an extensively documented practice that, in preindustrial societies, finds its biological justification as a means to safeguard child survival. First, we show that the duration of contemporary postpartum abstinence increases with the duration of ancestral postpartum sex taboos within a woman's ethnic group. Sec- ond, postpartum abstinence is de facto pronatalist, as it increases the number of children ever born to a woman. At the same time, it increases the number of chil- dren of a woman who have died; lengthens birth intervals though not sufficiently to meet recommended guidelines; and increases neonatal death and child stunting. Exploring the underlying mechanisms reveals that postpartum abstinence is asso- ciated with patriarchal cultural norms and that the motivation for its adoption is that it serves as a purification ritual. Overall, our findings question the biologi- cal rationale for postpartum abstinence as a means to protect child health, while aligning with anthropological evidence documenting its adoption as a ritual.

Keywords: Family planning; postpartum abstinence; postpartum sex taboos; con- traception; fertility; birth spacing; child health; tuber suitability; folklore; female empowerment; rituals; sub-Saharan Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D15 I18 J13 N37 O11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Working Paper: Family Planning and Ethnic Heritage: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:glodps:1511

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