Consequences of Unwanted Childbearing: A Study of Child Outcomes in Bangladesh

Satvika Chalasani, Pennsylvania State University
Michael Koenig, Johns Hopkins University

The assumption that unwanted childbearing has a wide array of detrimental consequences is an important justification for investment in family planning services. Existing empirical research suggests that such detrimental consequences are substantial. But this research, particularly studies in low-income non-Western settings, is suspect due to shortcomings in measurement (reliance on retrospective reports of the wantedness of births that are of questionable validity) and in statistical modeling (estimation of models that fail to account for effects of omitted family-level variables). The objective of this paper is to assess the consequences of unwanted childbearing using exceptional longitudinal data from two rural districts in Bangladesh. In these data, children are classified as wanted versus unwanted on the basis of prospective fertility preferences. Other advantages of this research include the large size of the sample of children and the measurement of sex-specific preferences.