State of World Population 2012 - Country Page List - UNFPA

States in 1960. The pill afforded American
women unprecedented freedom to make simultaneous
decisions about childbearing as well as
their careers. A causal analysis of the impact of
the pill on the timing of first births and women’s
labour force participation suggests that legal
access to the pill before age 21 significantly
reduced the likelihood of a first birth before age
22, increased the number of women in the paid
labour force, and raised the number of annual
hours worked. The effects are significant: from
1970 to 1990 early access to the pill accounted
for three of the 20 percentage-point increase (14
per cent) in labour force participation rates and
67 of the 450 increase in annual hours worked
(15 per cent) among women between the ages
of 16 and 30 (Bailey, 2006).
Access to family planning services also affects
labour market participation through the reduction
of morbidity and improvement in overall
health. Family planning contributes to the
reduction of risky and complicated births, and
this reduces the risk of maternal morbidity and
increases women’s productivity.
There are some exceptions to these patterns.
In some contexts, female labour force participation
can decrease as fertility declines or as
educational attainment and socioeconomic status
increase. In the Matlab project in Bangladesh,
for example, the provision of family planning
and reproductive health services to adult women
in their homes for a period of 20 years resulted
in significant improvements in well-being,
but female participation in wage employment
actually declined. Researchers attribute this
phenomenon to strong patriarchal mores and
restrictions on female mobility, particularly for
wealthy and high-status women, causing some
women to work at home instead of performing
manual or wage labour outside the home.
Estimates indicated, however, that women
who did work in paid jobs received wages that
were more than one-third higher than their
counterparts who had not received programme
services. These wage gains were largely driven by
the higher returns women received from their
schooling in villages covered by the programme
(Schultz, 2009a).
Health and income benefits from family
planning also bolster women’s rights
Declines in fertility, improvements in health and
increased incomes can improve women’s rights
at home and in their communities. A recent
study illustrates that when fertility declines
and the importance of human capital in the
economy increases, men start to be willing to
share power with women to ensure that children
get better educated, since women invest more
in children’s human capital and their bargaining
power matters for household decisions (Doepke
and Tertlit, 2009). Men face a tradeoff between
their own utility and the utility of their children,
grandchildren, and future generations. This tilts
their preferences towards ceding women greater
rights. The evidence for this argument is historical:
using parliamentary debates and newspaper
editorials, the authors document that in both
England and the United States there was a
gradual shift during the nineteenth century from
arguments that concentrated on the rights of
men towards a view that gave first priority to
the needs of children.
Family planning and the well-being
of children
Improved reproductive health services influence
child health in several ways. First, the use of
family planning services to achieve a reduction
in the number of pregnancies and the better
spacing of births create positive spillovers
because healthier women give birth to healthier
76 CHAPTER 4: THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC IMPACT OF FAMILY PLANNING