Intimate partner violence and family planning decisions: Experimental evidence from rural Tanzania

Abstract

In rural northern Tanzania, 89 percent report wanting to delay or prevent pregnancy, yet only 12 percent of women are using contraceptives. This study uses a randomized experiment to evaluate the effect of an informational family planning program on couples fertility behavior. I estimate the effect of asymmetric spousal information, randomizing the inclusion of husbands in household consultations about family planning. I interact the effect with baseline levels of intimate partner violence to explore the way abuse changes the effect of family planning information. I find that the informational treatment had a significant effect on pregnancy reduction. In this context where men have much larger fertility desires than their wives, I find that women who consulted with a family planning worker together with their husbands (rather than alone) experienced a larger reduction in pregnancies and a larger increase in reported contraceptive use. However, this effect is reversed for women who experience intimate partner violence; for these women, participation in the couples consultations resulted in significantly more pregnancies at endline. This research supports the effectiveness of including husbands in sexual health consultations while demonstrating the need for careful consideration of intimate partner violence in family planning interventions.