The Family According to the State: Modernization Ideals and Fertility Decline

This paper shows that the narratives used by states to legitimize family ideals can causally influence fertility at scale. We study one of the clearest examples of a state undergoing a rapid ideological shift on the meaning of family — the mid-1990s democratic transition of Malawi — when the newly elected government abruptly replaced the long-standing pro-natalist stance of the previous regime with a modernization agenda built upon the expansion of contraceptive services and a narrative promoting the ideal of modern family as smaller, rational, and future-oriented. To isolate the effect of narratives, we combine the timing of the transition with plausibly exogenous spatial variation in individuals’ exposure to state radio, the country’s de facto monopoly over mass communication and the primary vehicle for disseminating modernization ideals. Using difference-in-differences designs applied to birth histories and census data, we find that higher exposure led to persistent fertility declines and delays in marriage and first birth. The evidence points to a shift in preferences and norms around reproduction, rather than changes in knowledge about family planning. The findings show that sustained fertility transitions require ideational change, even in the absence of economic development, and highlight the central role of the state in shaping reproductive preferences.