TY - JOUR
T1 - The Effect of Reframing the Goals of Family Planning Programs from Limiting Fertility to Birth Spacing
T2 - Evidence from Pakistan
AU - Naz, Saman
AU - Acharya, Yubraj
N1 - Funding Information:
We acknowledge the assistance provided by the Population Research Institute at Pennsylvania State University, which is supported by an infrastructure grant by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P2CHD041025). We are also grateful to the editor, editorial board, the managing editor, and the two reviewers of this journal for their comments and guidance. We would also like to thank the DHS Program and ICF for making the Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey data available.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Authors. Studies in Family Planning published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Population Council
PY - 2021/6
Y1 - 2021/6
N2 - Contraceptive prevalence in Pakistan has plateaued near 34 percent for over a decade, suggesting that fertility levels are likely to stay high unless effective interventions are designed. We evaluate the Family Advancement for Life and Health 2007–2012 (FALAH), a family planning project implemented in 31 districts of Pakistan. Deviating from previous programs, FALAH emphasized birth spacing—as opposed to limiting family size—as the primary purpose of contraceptive use. We use Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey to evaluate FALAH's impact on continuous and binary measures of birth intervals. To estimate the causal effects of the project, we compare the outcomes for multiple children born to the same mother before and after the project. We find that FALAH increased interbirth intervals by 2.4 months on average and reduced the proportion of short birth intervals by approximately 7.1 percentage points. This finding suggests that birth spacing as a goal of contraceptive use may resonate better with Pakistani couples than limiting family size. The project's effects were more pronounced for women with high education, in rural areas, and in the middle of the wealth distribution.
AB - Contraceptive prevalence in Pakistan has plateaued near 34 percent for over a decade, suggesting that fertility levels are likely to stay high unless effective interventions are designed. We evaluate the Family Advancement for Life and Health 2007–2012 (FALAH), a family planning project implemented in 31 districts of Pakistan. Deviating from previous programs, FALAH emphasized birth spacing—as opposed to limiting family size—as the primary purpose of contraceptive use. We use Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey to evaluate FALAH's impact on continuous and binary measures of birth intervals. To estimate the causal effects of the project, we compare the outcomes for multiple children born to the same mother before and after the project. We find that FALAH increased interbirth intervals by 2.4 months on average and reduced the proportion of short birth intervals by approximately 7.1 percentage points. This finding suggests that birth spacing as a goal of contraceptive use may resonate better with Pakistani couples than limiting family size. The project's effects were more pronounced for women with high education, in rural areas, and in the middle of the wealth distribution.
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U2 - 10.1111/sifp.12155
DO - 10.1111/sifp.12155
M3 - Article
C2 - 34014560
AN - SCOPUS:85106260096
SN - 0039-3665
VL - 52
SP - 125
EP - 142
JO - Studies in Familiy Planning
JF - Studies in Familiy Planning
IS - 2
ER -