The effects of women's bargaining power on contraceptive use: Evidence from Zambia

This presentation aims to examine the relationship between women's household bargaining power and their adoption of modern contraception in Zambia, using the 2018 DHS survey data. Relying on direct measures of women's bargaining power (as indicated by the preexisting literature), which include a woman's ability to make decisions about her own healthcare, large household purchases, small household purchases, visits to her family and friends, and contraceptive use, as well as measures of her autonomous financial capability. This measure of financial capability is then interacted with a woman's ability to make healthcare decisions solely or jointly with her husband to shed additional light on the influence that bargaining power has on the uptake of modern contraceptive methods. Having both financial capability and the sole ability to make healthcare decisions for herself increases a woman's probability of adopting modern contraceptive methods by 87%, and having sole responsibility over contraceptive decisions increases it by approximately 56%. Using lasso as a robustness check, it is determined that the model is relatively well specified and has quite a large amount of explanatory power. Finally, the presentation uses a comparative analysis of spousal discord to demonstrate how spouses' often conflicting reports of intrahousehold decision making can impact key outcomes for women and finds that both spousal accord and the scenario in which the woman takes power are most effective for the adoption of modern contraception (leading to a 16.7% and 14.6% increase in the probability of using modern contraception, respectively). Overall, the study finds that several aspects of a woman's household decision making and financial freedom, as well as the degree and directionality of spousal discord within her household impact her probability of adopting modern contraceptive methods.