State of World Population 2012 - UNFPA Haiti

States in 1960. The pill afforded Americanwomen unprecedented freedom to make simultaneousdecisions about childbearing as well astheir careers. A causal analysis of the impact ofthe pill on the timing of first births and women’slabour force participation suggests that legalaccess to the pill before age 21 significantlyreduced the likelihood of a first birth before age22, increased the number of women in the paidlabour force, and raised the number of annualhours worked. The effects are significant: from1970 to 1990 early access to the pill accountedfor three of the 20 percentage-point increase (14per cent) in labour force participation rates and67 of the 450 increase in annual hours worked(15 per cent) among women between the agesof 16 and 30 (Bailey, 2006).Access to family planning services also affectslabour market participation through the reductionof morbidity and improvement in overallhealth. Family planning contributes to thereduction of risky and complicated births, andthis reduces the risk of maternal morbidity andincreases women’s productivity.There are some exceptions to these patterns.In some contexts, female labour force participationcan decrease as fertility declines or aseducational attainment and socioeconomic statusincrease. In the Matlab project in Bangladesh,for example, the provision of family planningand reproductive health services to adult womenin their homes for a period of 20 years resultedin significant improvements in well-being,but female participation in wage employmentactually declined. Researchers attribute thisphenomenon to strong patriarchal mores andrestrictions on female mobility, particularly forwealthy and high-status women, causing somewomen to work at home instead of performingmanual or wage labour outside the home.Estimates indicated, however, that womenwho did work in paid jobs received wages thatwere more than one-third higher than theircounterparts who had not received programmeservices. These wage gains were largely driven bythe higher returns women received from theirschooling in villages covered by the programme(Schultz, 2009a).Health and income benefits from familyplanning also bolster women’s rightsDeclines in fertility, improvements in health andincreased incomes can improve women’s rightsat home and in their communities. A recentstudy illustrates that when fertility declinesand the importance of human capital in theeconomy increases, men start to be willing toshare power with women to ensure that childrenget better educated, since women invest morein children’s human capital and their bargainingpower matters for household decisions (Doepkeand Tertlit, 2009). Men face a tradeoff betweentheir own utility and the utility of their children,grandchildren, and future generations. This tiltstheir preferences towards ceding women greaterrights. The evidence for this argument is historical:using parliamentary debates and newspapereditorials, the authors document that in bothEngland and the United States there was agradual shift during the nineteenth century fromarguments that concentrated on the rights ofmen towards a view that gave first priority tothe needs of children.Family planning and the well-beingof childrenImproved reproductive health services influencechild health in several ways. First, the use offamily planning services to achieve a reductionin the number of pregnancies and the betterspacing of births create positive spilloversbecause healthier women give birth to healthier76 CHAPTER 4: THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC IMPACT OF FAMILY PLANNING