“Family Planning Interventions in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Experimental Evidence from Malawi, India, and Sri Lanka”, Mahesh Karra (Global Development Policy)

Wednesday, November 7, 2018, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
Refreshments & networking at 2:45 PM
Hariri Institute for Computing
111 Cummington Mall, Room 180

Meet Our Fellows/Junior Faculty Fellow Presentation
Mahesh Karra
Junior Faculty Fellow, Hariri Institute for Computing
Assistant Professor, Global Development Policy (Pardee)

Family Planning Interventions in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Experimental Evidence from Malawi, India, and Sri Lanka

Abstract: In spite of declining birth rates and improvements to maternal health care, the total fertility rate, or the average number of births per woman, remains high in Sub-Saharan Africa; estimates from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) indicate that in most Sub-Saharan African countries, between 25 to 40 percent of unmarried women have at least one birth by the age of 19, and many of these births are unplanned. A high total fertility rate and large numbers of unintended pregnancies and unwanted births are causes for social concern because they contribute to high rates of induced abortion, increased maternal morbidity and mortality, and poor child health outcomes, which in turn place substantial health and economic burdens on women, their children, and their families. Improving access to family planning (FP) and reproductive health (RH) care may help African women and couples to meet their desired fertility and to avert unintended pregnancies, and interventions that aim to influence demand and supply of family planning have become increasingly common in developing countries. Nevertheless, there is a need for more impact evaluations of family planning interventions using randomized control trials, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa where rigorous experimental evidence is scarce. Few randomized control trials have been conducted to assess the causal impact of family planning in low-income countries, and even fewer impact evaluations have been conducted to determine the extent to which such family planning interventions may affect downstream health and development outcomes.

In this talk, Mahesh presents preliminary evidence from three ongoing field experiments from Sri Lanka, India, and Malawi that, when taken together, seek to identify the causal impact of family planning interventions on first stage outcomes, including contraceptive use, family planning knowledge, and awareness. He also outlines his plan for evaluating intervention impact on longer term outcomes of interest, including fertility, maternal and child health (MCH), and socioeconomic well-being.

Bio: Mahesh Karra is an Assistant Professor of Global Development Policy at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. His academic and research interests are broadly in development economics, health economics, quantitative methods, and applied demography. His research utilizes experimental and non-experimental methods to investigate the relationships between population, health, and economic development in low- and middle-income countries. He has conducted field work in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America, and his current research uses randomized controlled trials to evaluate the health and economic effects of improving access to family planning and maternal and child health services in Malawi, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Tanzania.