Television and contraceptive use: a weak signal?

Peters, Jörg / Christoph Strupat / Colin Vance
External Publications (2014)

in: Journal of Development Studies 50 (11), 1538–1549

In recent years, rural electrification and access to television have spread throughout the developing world. The values and cultural norms embodied in television programming have potentially profound implications for influencing behaviour, including reproductive decisions. After replicating Westoff and Koffman’s (2011) finding of a positive correlation between television ownership and contraception using pooled Indonesian data, we proceed to estimate a fixed-effects model. The coefficient on television loses its significance while other policy relevant variables retain theirs. We conclude that the growing corpus of cross-sectional evidence on a link between television and contraception should be interpreted cautiously.

About the author

Strupat, Christoph

Economist