Data and Code for: The Negligible Effect of Free Contraception on Fertility: Experimental Evidence from Burkina Faso

This package contains the survey data and documentation for “The Negligible Effect of Free Contraception on Fertility: Experimental Evidence from Burkina Faso,” by Pascaline Dupas, Seema Jayachandran, Adriana Lleras-Muney,and Pauline Rossi. It contains all data and code necessary for replicating the tables and figures in the paper. The data files are in Stata (.dta), and the replication code was written in Stata. The abstract of the paper is as follows:

We conducted a randomized trial among 14,545 households in rural Burkina Faso to test the oft-cited hypothesis that limited access to contraception is an important driver of high fertility rates in West Africa. We do not find support for this hypothesis. Women who were given free access to modern contraception for three years did not have lower birth rates; we can reject even modest effects. We cross-randomized additional interventions to address inefficiencies that might depress demand for free contraception, specifically misperceptions about the child mortality rate and social norms. Free contraception did not significantly influence fertility even in combination with these interventions. The villages within the catchment areas of 100 public health centers across 20 provinces in Burkina Faso.