Pak Sudarno's Big Family

In chapter 5 of Poor Economics, the idea of population policy was brought forth. Basically, Banerjee and Duflo analyzed what factors determine desired or non-desired family size some developing countries such as, India, Columbia, China, Ethiopia, etc. All of these countries, at some point in time, have attempted to implement a population policy whether it is China’s draconian one-child policy, or India’s mandatory sterilization system in the late 1970’s.

As Banerjee and Duflo dive into the determinants of how many children poor families decide to have, it becomes apparent that contraception may not have as much of a role as one would think in determining family size.

It was clear there was much more than contraception, aspects such as social norms, family dynamics, religious values, and economic status. All of these aspects play a major role, not only in determining family size but also how they will treat each child.

The statistic that I would like to look into more and see how it affects maternal deaths each year would be how well an affect modern contraceptive has on saving mothers lives. I would assume if couples are using modern contraceptives then mothers are at a less risk of dying. The regression would look like this:

Maternal Deaths = a + b₁ (Family Income) + b₂ (# of Children) + b₃ (Education of Mother) + b₄ (Use Contraceptives) + e

The dummy variable would be whether or not the couple uses modern contraceptives, I would give an answer “yes=1 and no=0.” I would then analyze the t-statistic and coefficient corresponding to this dummy variable and make a conclusion about how much of an affect modern contraceptives actually have on preventing maternal deaths.