IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ajt/wcinch/73328.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Subjective Expectations and Demands for Contraception

Author

Listed:
  • Miller, Grant
  • de Paula, Áureo
  • Valente, Christine

Abstract

One quarter of married, fertile‐age women in Sub‐Saharan Africa report not wanting a pregnancy and yet do not use contraceptives. To study this issue, we collect detailed data on women’s subjective probabilistic beliefs and estimate a structural model of contraceptive choices. Our results indicate that costly interventions like eliminating supply constraints would only modestly increase contraceptive use. Alternatively, increasing partners’ approval of methods, aligning partners’ fertility preferences with women’s beliefs about pregnancy risk absent contraception have the potential to increase use considerably. Results from a before/after experiment testing this last finding are highly consistent with the structural estimates.

Suggested Citation

  • Miller, Grant & de Paula, Áureo & Valente, Christine, 2020. "Subjective Expectations and Demands for Contraception," CINCH Working Paper Series (since 2020) 73328, Duisburg-Essen University Library, DuEPublico.
    • Handle: RePEc:ajt:wcinch:73328
    DOI: 10.17185/duepublico/73328
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://duepublico2.uni-due.de/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/duepublico_derivate_00073130/CINCH_Series_2020_03.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17185/duepublico/73328?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Adeline Delavande & Xavier Giné & David McKenzie, 2011. "Eliciting probabilistic expectations with visual aids in developing countries: how sensitive are answers to variations in elicitation design?," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(3), pages 479-497, April.
    2. Krinsky, Itzhak & Robb, A Leslie, 1986. "On Approximating the Statistical Properties of Elasticities," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 68(4), pages 715-719, November.
    3. Jonathan de Quidt & Johannes Haushofer & Christopher Roth, 2018. "Measuring and Bounding Experimenter Demand," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(11), pages 3266-3302, November.
    4. Adeline Delavande & Hans-Peter Kohler, 2012. "The Impact of HIV Testing on Subjective Expectations and Risky Behavior in Malawi," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 49(3), pages 1011-1036, August.
    5. Jeremy Lise & Shannon Seitz & Jeffrey Smith, 2015. "Evaluating search and matching models using experimental data," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-35, December.
    6. Kenneth I. Wolpin & Petra E. Todd, 2006. "Assessing the Impact of a School Subsidy Program in Mexico: Using a Social Experiment to Validate a Dynamic Behavioral Model of Child Schooling and Fertility," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1384-1417, December.
    7. Bennear, Lori & Tarozzi, Alessandro & Pfaff, Alexander & Balasubramanya, Soumya & Matin Ahmed, Kazi & van Geen, Alexander, 2013. "Impact of a randomized controlled trial in arsenic risk communication on household water-source choices in Bangladesh," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 225-240.
    8. Pritchett, Lant H. & DEC, 1994. "Desired fertility and the impact of population policies," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1273, The World Bank.
    9. Grant Miller & Kimberly Singer Babiarz, 2016. "Family Planning Program Effects: Evidence from Microdata," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 42(1), pages 7-26, March.
    10. Teodora Boneva & Christopher Rauh, 2017. "Socio-Economic Gaps in University Enrollment: The Role of Perceived Pecuniary and Non-Pecuniary Returns," CESifo Working Paper Series 6756, CESifo.
    11. Blattman, Christopher & Jamison, Julian & Koroknay-Palicz, Tricia & Rodrigues, Katherine & Sheridan, Margaret, 2016. "Measuring the measurement error: A method to qualitatively validate survey data," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 99-112.
    12. Adeline Delavande & Basit Zafar, 2019. "University Choice: The Role of Expected Earnings, Nonpecuniary Outcomes, and Financial Constraints," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(5), pages 2343-2393.
    13. Ainsworth, Martha & Beegle, Kathleen & Nyamete, Andrew, 1996. "The Impact of Women's Schooling on Fertility and Contraceptive Use: A Study of Fourteen Sub-Saharan African Countries," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 10(1), pages 85-122, January.
    14. Mummolo, Jonathan & Peterson, Erik, 2019. "Demand Effects in Survey Experiments: An Empirical Assessment," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 113(2), pages 517-529, May.
    15. Esther Duflo & Rema Hanna & Stephen P. Ryan, 2012. "Incentives Work: Getting Teachers to Come to School," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(4), pages 1241-1278, June.
    16. Stephenson, R. & Baschieri, A. & Clements, S. & Hennink, M. & Madise, N., 2007. "Contextual influences on modern contraceptive use in sub-Saharan Africa," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 97(7), pages 1233-1240.
    17. Wilbert van der Klaauw, 2012. "On the Use of Expectations Data in Estimating Structural Dynamic Choice Models," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 30(3), pages 521-554.
    18. Cardell, N. Scott, 1997. "Variance Components Structures for the Extreme-Value and Logistic Distributions with Application to Models of Heterogeneity," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(2), pages 185-213, April.
    19. Bound, John & Brown, Charles & Mathiowetz, Nancy, 2001. "Measurement error in survey data," Handbook of Econometrics, in: J.J. Heckman & E.E. Leamer (ed.), Handbook of Econometrics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 59, pages 3705-3843, Elsevier.
    20. Krinsky, Itzhak & Robb, A Leslie, 1990. "On Approximating the Statistical Properties of Elasticities: A Correction," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 72(1), pages 189-190, February.
    21. Cassidy, Rachel & Groot Bruinderink, Marije & Janssens, Wendy & Morsink, Karlijn, 2021. "The power to protect: Household bargaining and female condom use," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
    22. van der Klaauw, Wilbert & Wolpin, Kenneth I., 2008. "Social security and the retirement and savings behavior of low-income households," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 145(1-2), pages 21-42, July.
    23. Matthew Wiswall & Basit Zafar, 2015. "Determinants of College Major Choice: Identification using an Information Experiment," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 82(2), pages 791-824.
    24. Adeline Delavande, 2008. "Pill, Patch, Or Shot? Subjective Expectations And Birth Control Choice," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 49(3), pages 999-1042, August.
    25. Berry, Steven & Levinsohn, James & Pakes, Ariel, 1995. "Automobile Prices in Market Equilibrium," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 63(4), pages 841-890, July.
    26. Neily Zakiyah & Antoinette D I van Asselt & Frank Roijmans & Maarten J Postma, 2016. "Economic Evaluation of Family Planning Interventions in Low and Middle Income Countries; A Systematic Review," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(12), pages 1-19, December.
    27. Grant Miller and Kimberly Singer Babiarz, 2016. "Family Planning Program Effects: A Review of Evidence from Microdata - Working Paper 422," Working Papers 422, Center for Global Development.
    28. Sayaka Nakamura, 2016. "Determinants of contraceptive choice among Japanese women: ten years after the pill approval," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 14(3), pages 553-575, September.
    29. Pascaline Dupas, 2011. "Health Behavior in Developing Countries," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 3(1), pages 425-449, September.
    30. repec:idb:brikps:77778 is not listed on IDEAS
    31. Nava Ashraf & Erica Field & Jean Lee, 2014. "Household Bargaining and Excess Fertility: An Experimental Study in Zambia," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(7), pages 2210-2237, July.
    32. Shattuck, D. & Kerner, B. & Gilles, K. & Hartmann, M. & Ng'ombe, T. & Guest, G., 2011. "Encouraging contraceptive uptake by motivating men to communicate about family planning: The Malawi Male Motivator project," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 101(6), pages 1089-1095.
    33. Hausman, J. A. & Abrevaya, Jason & Scott-Morton, F. M., 1998. "Misclassification of the dependent variable in a discrete-response setting," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 239-269, September.
    34. Levi, Maurice D, 1973. "Errors in the Variables Bias in the Presence of Correctly Measured Variables," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(5), pages 985-986, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gabriella Conti & Pamela Giustinelli, 2023. "For better or worse? Subjective expectations and cost-benefit trade-offs in health behavior," IFS Working Papers W23/19, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    2. Abrahamsen, Signe A. & Ginja, Rita & Riise, Julie, 2021. "School Health Programs: Education, Health, and Welfare Dependency of Young Adults," IZA Discussion Papers 14546, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Borra, Cristina & González, Libertad & Patiño, David, 2021. "Maternal Age and Infant Health," CINCH Working Paper Series (since 2020) 74847, Duisburg-Essen University Library, DuEPublico.
    4. D’Exelle, Ben & Ringdal, Charlotte, 2022. "Women’s use of family planning services: An experiment on the husband’s involvement," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    5. Conti, G.; & Giustinelli, P.;, 2022. "For Better or Worse? Subjective Expectations and Cost-Benefit Trade-Offs in Health Behavior: An Application to Lockdown Compliance in the United Kingdom," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 22/14, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    6. Barili, Emilia & Bertoli, Paola & Grembi, Veronica & Rattini, Veronica, 2021. "COVID Angels Fighting Daily Demons? Mental Health of Healthcare Workers and Religion," CINCH Working Paper Series (since 2020) 74583, Duisburg-Essen University Library, DuEPublico.
    7. Gizem Koşar & Cormac O'Dea, 2022. "Expectations Data in Structural Microeconomic Models," NBER Working Papers 30094, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Cassidy, Rachel & Groot Bruinderink, Marije & Janssens, Wendy & Morsink, Karlijn, 2021. "The power to protect: Household bargaining and female condom use," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
    9. Fischer, Martin & Karlsson, Martin & Prodromidis, Nikolaos, 2021. "The Long-Term Effects of Hospital Deliveries," IZA Discussion Papers 14562, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Kettlewell, Nathan & Walker, Matthew J. & Yoo, Hong Il, 2024. "Alternative Models of Preference Heterogeneity for Elicited Choice Probabilities," IZA Discussion Papers 16821, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Romuald Méango & François Poinas, 2023. "The (Option-) Value of Overstaying," CESifo Working Paper Series 10536, CESifo.
    12. M. Kate Bundorf & Jill DeMatteis & Grant Miller & Maria Polyakova & Jialu L. Streeter & Jonathan Wivagg, 2021. "Risk Perceptions and Protective Behaviors: Evidence from COVID-19 Pandemic," NBER Working Papers 28741, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Kronenberg, Christoph, 2020. "New(spaper) Evidence of a Reduction in Suicide Mentions during the 19th‐century US Gold Rush," CINCH Working Paper Series (since 2020) 73382, Duisburg-Essen University Library, DuEPublico.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Grewenig, Elisabeth & Lergetporer, Philipp & Werner, Katharina & Woessmann, Ludger, 2022. "Incentives, search engines, and the elicitation of subjective beliefs: Evidence from representative online survey experiments," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 231(1), pages 304-326.
    2. Xavier D'Haultfoeuille & Christophe Gaillac & Arnaud Maurel, 2021. "Rationalizing rational expectations: Characterizations and tests," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(3), pages 817-842, July.
    3. Sebastian Galiani & Juan Pantano, 2021. "Structural Models: Inception and Frontier," NBER Working Papers 28698, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. de Bresser, Jochem, 2021. "Evaluating the Accuracy of Counterfactuals The Role of Heterogeneous Expectations in Life Cycle Models," Other publications TiSEM a7e2b4d8-fed0-4e86-926f-d, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    5. Gizem Koşar & Cormac O'Dea, 2022. "Expectations Data in Structural Microeconomic Models," NBER Working Papers 30094, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. de Bresser, Jochem, 2021. "Evaluating the Accuracy of Counterfactuals The Role of Heterogeneous Expectations in Life Cycle Models," Discussion Paper 2021-034, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    7. Ingar Haaland & Christopher Roth & Johannes Wohlfart, 2023. "Designing Information Provision Experiments," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 61(1), pages 3-40, March.
    8. D'Haultfoeuille, Xavier & Gaillac, Christophe & Maurel, Arnaud, 2018. "Rationalizing Rational Expectations? Tests and Deviations," IZA Discussion Papers 11989, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Boneva, Teodora & Golin, Marta & Rauh, Christopher, 2022. "Can perceived returns explain enrollment gaps in postgraduate education?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    10. Philipp Lergetporer & Ludger Woessmann, 2019. "The political economy of higher education finance: how information and design affect public preferences for tuition," CESifo Working Paper Series 7536, CESifo.
    11. Riccardo Scarpa & Claudia Bazzani & Diego Begalli & Roberta Capitello, 2021. "Resolvable and Near‐epistemic Uncertainty in Stated Preference for Olive Oil: An Empirical Exploration," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 72(2), pages 335-369, June.
    12. Finlay, Jocelyn E., 2021. "Women’s reproductive health and economic activity: A narrative review," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    13. Dupas, Pascaline & Miguel, Edward, 2016. "Impacts and Determinants of Health Levels in Low-Income Countries," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt3r04k69j, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    14. Charles F. Manski, 2018. "More on random utility models with bounded ambiguity," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 84(2), pages 205-213, March.
    15. Basit Zafar, 2013. "College Major Choice and the Gender Gap," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 48(3), pages 545-595.
    16. Charles F. Manski, 2018. "Survey Measurement of Probabilistic Macroeconomic Expectations: Progress and Promise," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(1), pages 411-471.
    17. Sonia Laszlo & Muhammad Farhan Majid & Laëtitia Renée, 2024. "Conditional cash transfers and women's reproductive choices," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(2), February.
    18. Delavande, Adeline & Del Bono, Emilia & Holford, Angus, 2022. "Academic and non-academic investments at university: The role of expectations, preferences and constraints," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 231(1), pages 74-97.
    19. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/53r60a8s3kup1vc9je5h30d2n is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Michele Giannola, 2024. "Parental Investments and Intra-household Inequality in Child Human Capital: Evidence from a Survey Experiment," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 134(658), pages 671-727.
    21. Stephane Bonhomme & Angela Denis, 2023. "Estimating Individual Responses when Tomorrow Matters," Papers 2310.09105, arXiv.org, revised May 2024.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Contraception; Probabilistic Beliefs; Mozambique;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ajt:wcinch:73328. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: DuEPublico (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cinchde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.