Starting June 1, 2017, all new PopPov materials will be located on the Population and Poverty (PopPov) Research Network project page located on the Population Reference Bureau website. The PopPov website (poppov.org) is still fully searchable, with content dating back to 2006.

With funding from the Hewlett Foundation, travel funding is available for researchers to attend or present at conferences, policy workshops, and technical meetings, or to engage with PopPov research in other ways.

PopPov has supported a global group of researchers looking at how population dynamics affect economic outcomes. This video follows the academic and professional successes that PopPov-funded researchers have experienced over their 10-year history.

A project report on two interrelated Fafo research projects, with special focus given to the two issues of child mobility and sibling diversification.

The PopPov Stakeholder Listings serve to facilitate the dissemination of research results and recommendations to the appropriate stakeholders in government, non-governmental organizations, and the private sector.

Members of the PopPov Research Network are encouraged to submit papers to the Cape Town IUSSP conference from October 29 – November 4, 2017. The Hewlett Foundation has offered to provide some travel grants for people involved in sessions related to the PopPov agenda of promoting research on the interaction of population dynamics, reproductive health, and economic development.

The PopPov Project Map is a visual representation of the countries where the PopPov network of researchers have studied social, health, and economic issues. You can click on the red pins to learn more about projects by location.

Research scientists will share the latest findings on interventions that contribute to better health and educational attainment for adolescent girls in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. The briefing will also explore how increased human capital of adolescent girls can contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

This policy brief summarizes policymakers’ perspectives on what constitutes barriers to evidence-informed policymaking. It also presents strategies for making research results more accessible to high-level policymakers at the country level, based on what they say they want as well as evidence about what information policymakers can and do use in policymaking. Finally, the brief includes examples of how PopPov-supported researchers addressed policy-relevant questions and applied some of the outreach strategies that policymakers suggest.

This workshop will tackle the opportunities and challenges related to achieving the demographic dividend, especially in countries throughout sub-Saharan Africa, and will equip attendees with information and skills to contribute to moving the demographic dividend agenda forward. Speakers will discuss metrics and methodologies used to quantify economic impacts and how to effectively engage with policy audiences and other stakeholders on the demographic dividend.

The Population Reference Bureau (PRB), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and the Union for African Population Studies (UAPS) will bring together journalists and communications professionals from across sub-Saharan Africa for a day-long workshop in advance of the 7th African Population Conference. Participants will have the opportunity to learn about key concepts of the demographic dividend, consider its relevance to local, national, and international news, and interview researchers at the conference.

Despite global spread of reproductive health and family planning programs, little is known about medium and long-term effects on the women who benefited from family planning and their children. This panel will review recent research from a project that examines causal evidence of the impact of the Matlab Maternal and Child Health and Family Planning Program (MCH-FP) over 35 years after the start of the program.

NWO-WOTRO Science for Global Development has awarded funding to five projects within the research program Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR). Two researchers from the PopPov Research Initiative have projects that received awards, including Dr. Jocelyn Finlay, Harvard University, for empowering young women in Bujumbura to improve their sexual and reproductive health and rights, and claim to their rights; and Professor Gervais Beninguisse for sexual and reproductive health of youth and adults with disabilities in Bujumbura.

In June 2015, the Population and Poverty (PopPov) Conference on Population, Reproductive Health, and Economic Development hosted researchers to present results that have been supported through these partnerships, as well as through other sources.

The Methods Workshop at the 2015 PopPov Conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia examined Women’s Economic Empowerment and Development: Issues in Measurement and Defining Causal Impact. The objectives included defining women’s economic empowerment, as well as a discussion of the complexity involved in measuring women’s economic impact and the existing evidence on the causal impact of policies, programs, and development outcomes. The workshop was organized by Sarah Baird, with an introduction from Takyiwaa Manuh and presentations by Amber Peterman and Niklas Buehren.

The Population and Poverty (PopPov) Research Network’s Capstone Research Conference on Population, Reproductive Health, and Economic Development will take place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia June 24-26. This Conference will bring together academic researchers, funders, and policymakers from around the globe who are interested in how population dynamics impact economics outcomes. The agenda includes seven paper sessions covering topics ranging from “Evaluative Strategies for Empowering Women and Girls” to “Economic Activity, Employment, and Income.” A pre-Conference methods workshop will examine issues in measurement and defining causal impact in the field of women’s economic empowerment and development. This Conference will provide opportunities to learn about ongoing and completed research on population, reproductive health, and economic development, summarize policy-relevant research results, reflect on the achievements of the PopPov Research Initiative, and discuss the future of the field. Throughout the week, the PRB team will tweet from the conference using the hashtag #PopPov15. Follow @PopPovNetwork for the latest PopPov Research Network research, news, and opportunities.

Helena Choi, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s program officer for the PopPov Network, wrote a blog titled “PopPov Pop Quiz” highlighting the upcoming PopPov Conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Read Helena’s reflection on the past ten years of the PopPov Initiative, and how the PopPov Conferences have contributed to the Initiative.

The Population Reference Bureau is pleased to announce two recipients of the research grant award for the Alumni of the Hewlett Dissertation Fellowships in Population, Reproductive Health and Economic Development. This year’s Alumni Research grants were awarded to the following researchers: Shamma Adeeb Alam (University of Washington 2012 – 2014 Fellow) for the project “Do Community Health Workers Lead to Improved Health Awareness and Increased Use of Health Technology among Individuals? Evidence Using Experimental Data from Uganda” and Catalina Herrera-Almanza (Cornell University 2012 – 2014 Fellow) for research on “Intergenerational Effects of Family Planning Programs: Evidence from Madagascar.”

Over 60 people attended PopPov’s parallel event during the 59th annual UN Commission on the Status of Women. The panel, “Rights Make Might! Reproductive Rights as Economic Empowerment for Women and Girls,” explored how access to quality reproductive health services protect and improve the health and economic well-being of women and girls. Researchers Anne Khasakhala, Catalina Herrera Almanza, and Amber Peterman shared some of their findings. The event was co-sponsored by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW). Kate Gilmore (Deputy Executive Director, UNFPA) and Sarah Degnan Kambou (President, ICRW) provided comments affirming the importance of reproductive health to promote economic empowerment. Click the link above for more information on rights and women’s economic empowerment.

PRB hosted a panel at the UNESCO Management of Social Transformations (MOST) Programme East Africa Regional Meeting in Nairobi, Kenya on February 26, 2015. Researchers from the PopPov Research Network shared policy-relevant findings with ministers of social development and key decision makers from the East African Community. Panelists included: Joseph Babigumira, Anne Khasakhala, Dieudonné Muhoza, and Marlene Lee. Visit the link above for more information on the UNESCO MOST Programme and the Regional Meeting.

This PopPov research brief examines how investments in women’s and children’s health contribute to economic development. The research focuses on sub-Saharan Africa with an emphasis on including researchers and institutions from the continent as partners. One of the aims is to generate research findings that could be translated into program and policy recommendations for near-term use.

On March 17, 2015, PRB will host a parallel event during the 59th annual UN Commission on the Status of Women. The panel, “Rights Make Might! Reproductive Rights as Economic Empowerment for Women and Girls,” will explore how access to quality reproductive health services protect and improve the health and economic well-being of women and girls. Research supported by the Hewlett Foundation’s Population and Poverty Research Initiative demonstrates that delaying childbirth, greater spacing between children, and good obstetric care supports women’s continued school enrollment, participation in the labor force, and economic productivity. Ensuring the right to access reproductive health care empowers women! Date: March 17, 2015 Time: 12:30 PM ET Location: Church Center of the United Nations – 777 1st Avenue, East 44th Street, New York, NY 10017 – 10th Floor Learn more about the 59th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women at http://goo.gl/Xo2ddj.

The Behavioral Economics in Reproductive Health Initiative has recently published a review paper that presents a framework for applying behavioral economics to family planning and reproductive health (FPRH), and sets the agenda for future research. The researchers found that while many of the behavorial economics tools used in public health and policy interventions have not yet been tested in the context of reproductive health, there is great potential for the application of behavioral economics to FPRH. Read the full review paper, “A Review of Behavorial Economics in Reproductive Health.”

Maternal mortality in Gambia is nearly 60 times higher than in Norway. A research collaboration between the University of Oslo and the Gambian healthcare system aims to halve it. Apollon, the award winning magazine from the University of Oslo, features a new video on Johanne Sundby’s work addressing this issue.

Despite increased investments in communication resources, researchers continue to encounter challenges in sharing their findings with policymakers. This new PopPov research brief addresses these challenges and highlights the experiences of four research teams who communicated findings from studies supported under the PopPov initiative.

The Population Reference Bureau will begin a new stage in its partnership with the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s Population and Poverty Research Initiative. With renewed funding from the Hewlett Foundation, PRB will shift its focus outward from the PopPov Network to engage policy audiences with results from PopPov projects and related research and to build researchers’ and advocates’ capacity to communicate these results.

The Closing Conference of the DEMTREND Program took place in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso on October 28-30, 2013. The Conference was organized by the Équilibres & Populations (E&P) regional office. It convened researchers, donor representatives, NGOs and public leaders to address the economic impacts of demographic and migratory trends in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as to discuss the dissemination tools needed to inform the policymakers in the region and the general public. The objective of the Conference was to share the results of the analytical work carried out under the DEMTREND Program, which was funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Patrick Ilboudo co-authored a recently published study in Health Policy and Planning that looks at both the costs and consequences of induced and spontaneous abortions and complications for women in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

The World Bank recently held a meeting in July 2013 at its headquarters in Washington, DC, to discuss the Demographic Dividend. David Canning, Joshua Wilde, Neelima Ramaraju, and Mahesh Karra’s “Demographic Dividend Macroeconomic Simulation Model” was presented in the meeting. It draws on a model developed in a project by Ashraf, Weil, and Wilde funded as part of the Hewlett PopPov Initiative.

At the Eighth Annual PopPov Conference on Population, Reproductive Health, and Economic Development in Nairobi, Kenya, Marlene Lee sat down with Andrew Foster of Brown University and Paul Schultz of Yale University, and discussed an important topic for researchers: the data currently being used to analyze questions about reproductive health and economic outcomes at the individual and household level. Many researchers use the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to analyze these relationships, while others apply the gold standard of evaluation: randomized controlled trials. In this blog post, Lee provides insights from Schultz and Foster on the ability of datasets like the DHS to analyze these relationships, and the future of analysis in the economic development field.

On Jan. 25, 2014, four senior-level researchers and donors opened the final day of the Eighth Annual PopPov Conference by sharing the strategies they have used for bringing research to policy and provoking thoughtful discussion. Peter da Costa, development consultant, facilitated the panel which included Jan Monteverde Haakonsen, Research Council of Norway; Chimaraoke Izugbara, African Population Health and Research Center (APHRC); Susan Rich, PRB; and Veronique Filippi, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The group addressed one of the core goals of the PopPov initiative: using evidence generated by PopPov researchers to inform policy. Panelists and conference attendees brought up the many challenges that both researchers and funders continue to confront in the pursuit of bringing research to policymakers.

The possibility of a demographic dividend is a great subject of debate in discussions of population and development issues in sub-Saharan Africa. The demographic evolution on the continent is marked by striking contrasts between, on the one hand, the rapid decline of mortality levels (especially infant and child mortality), and on the other, the slow erosion of high fertility levels. This contrast contributes to accelerating population growth in the region and does not bode rapid demographic change in the future. This, however, does not prevent some experts from having an optimistic vision of the demographic future of the continent.

On the final day of the 2014 PopPov Conference, Peter da Costa facilitated a panel on bringing research to policy makers. The panel included high-level researchers and funders who shared their insight on harnessing research to engage policy spaces. To learn more about the panel, read Dr. da Costa’s blog.

Nicola Branson, a member of the research team on the Fertility Timing and Women’s Economic Outcomes in South Africa project headed by Murray Leibbrandt and David Lam, was invited to be part of the statistics working group in the National Teenage Pregnancy Partnership (NTPP). NTTP is a coalition of diverse stakeholders interested in advancing sexual reproductive health and rights. The partnership recognizes the multi-sectoral approach needed to address teen pregnancy and was formed to bring together national expertise from government, civil society and academic sectors to share strategies and develop new approaches to better understand and address teen pregnancy. The NTPP has two main activities – a statistics working group and a teen pregnancy prevention campaign. Branson’s involvement provides an important bridge between the ongoing Hewlett-funded work at the University of Cape Town and this national initiative. Dr. Branson also gave a presentation on SALDRU’s research on teen pregnancy in the session, “Where to from here? Using hard evidence to determine policy on unplanned teenage pregnancy for the SADC region” at the International Conference on AIDS and STIs Africa (ICASA) in Cape Town, December 8, 2013.

Since 2005, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, with collaboration and co-funding from research councils in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, and Norway and from the World Bank, has invested in the Population and Poverty Research Initiative (PopPov). In November 2012, the foundation issued a request for proposals (RFP) for an evaluation of PopPov, to help guide the foundation’s decisions about both the substance and means of future investments in it. The RAND Corporation was selected to conduct the evaluation. For more information on the evaluation and access to the full report, visit the Hewlett Foundation website.

The Washington Fellowship is the new flagship program of the President’s Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI). This program will bring over 500 young leaders to the United States each year, beginning in 2014, for leadership training, academic coursework, and mentoring, and will create unique opportunities in Africa to put those new skills to practical use in propelling economic growth and prosperity and strengthening democratic institutions. One of the critical sectors that the fellowship tries to invest in is Public Management. It is tailored to young Africans who work or aspire to work in all levels of government, regional organizations such as the African Union, international bodies such as the United Nations, or other publicly-minded entities or think tanks.

A journal article based on Chalachew Desta Getahun’s dissertation, Fertility and maternal hours of work in Ethiopia: a case study in the Amhara region, was published in the November 2013 African Population Studies journal. His dissertation investigates to what extent and how population change (in terms of fertility) influences economic well-being and poverty conditions at individual and household levels in Ethiopia.

Hewlett Dissertation Alumni Research Grants are given to past Hewlett/IIE Dissertation Fellows. This year’s Alumni Research grants were awarded to the following researchers: Kelly Jones (IFPRI 2008-2010 Fellow) and Erick Gong (Middlebury 2009-2010 Fellow): “Can Savings Accounts Save Lives? Financial Products for Improving Sexual and Reproductive Health” The goal of this project is to see if providing women with financial independence in the form of mobile phone savings accounts can help them better manage risk in their daily lives. Amber Peterman (UNC North Carolina PRB 2007-2009 Fellow): “Income Shocks and Reproductive Health: Evidence from Large-scale Randomized Cash Transfer Experiments in Zambia” This study explores the impact of Zambia’s child grant programme (CGP), a government operated large-scale unconditional cash transfer programme.

The Hewlett Foundation announces the launch of its Work in Progress blog. Work in Progress will offer Hewlett staff an opportunity to share their thoughts and reactions to developments in their work and in their fields as well as philanthropy in general. It will highlight new strategies, evaluations, reports, new interesting ideas and articles, and more. Click the link above to read Hewlett President Larry Kramer’s post, “Learning, Transparency, and Blogs.”

The Hewlett Translation Initiative aims to provide French speakers in West and Central Africa with access to materials that highlight population, reproductive health, and family planning. The latest French translations of PRB publications include: Le Désire croissant des femmes d’Afrique subsaharienne de limiter le nombre de grossesses: Relever le défi. Les programmes de planification familiale doivent donc répondre aux besoins tant des femmes qui souhaitent les espacer en Afrique subsaharienne. La prise de décision des ménages et l’utilisation de la contraception en Zambie Cette note de recherche présente les résultats et les insinuations politiques tirés d’une étude de Nava Ashraf, Erica Field, and Jean Lee. Celles-ci ont examiné le rôle de l’époux dans la prise de décision relative à la planification familiale et elles ont présenté des données empiriques selon lesquelles le comportement des couples à l’égard des décisions sur l’utilisation de la contraception aboutissait à des résultats loin d’être parfaits en matière de fécondité. Besoins non satisfaits en planification familiale et demandes pour des familles plus petites au Rwanda Cette note de recherche offre une synthèse des résultats présentés dans un article publié en 2009 par Dieudonné Muhoza Ndaruhuye et ses collègues qui donne un aperçu des facteurs liés à l’utilisation de la planification par les Rwandais et les dynamiques de la population nationale. For a full list of PRB publications in French, visit the PRB website or the PopPov website.

Family planning services promote a wide range of health and socioeconomic benefits to women, men, and their families. Still, many barriers prevent women from using contraception. Despite efforts to increase awareness and improve access to these family planning services, unmet need for family planning and unwanted pregnancies remains high in many low- and middle-income countries, suggesting that other factors may be driving contraceptive use. One such factor relates to household decisionmaking about fertility. Specifically, disagreements between a husband and wife about family planning may influence decisions about contraceptive use. Common sources of disagreements between partners include: Preferences for whether or not to use family planning. What contraceptive method to use. Mismatches in ideal family size. This PopPov network research brief presents findings and policy implications from a study by Nava Ashraf, Erica Field, and Jean Lee. They investigated the husband’s role in family planning decisions and presented evidence that couples’ behavior regarding decisions about contraceptive use produce less than ideal fertility outcomes. The study randomly assigned individuals to three groups: individuals chosen to receive a voucher, granting immediate and free access to a range of contraceptive methods, including concealable contraceptives such as implants or injectables, in the presence of their husband (couples treatment); women chosen to receive the same voucher, except in private (individual treatment); and women who did not receive a voucher (control group). Download the brief above (PDF: 560KB)

The International Network for the Demographic Evaluation of Population and Their Health (INDEPTH) Data Repository is an online archive of high-quality datasets from INDEPTH member Health and Demographic Surveillance Systems (HDSS) centres. It is the first data repository that specialises in longitudinal population-based data from low- and middle-income countries. As at its launch on 1st July 2013, the INDEPTH Data Repository contains detailed datasets underlying the indicators on INDEPTHStats for eight Network member centres. Data from an INDEPTH collaboration on the study of the epidemiology of epilepsy in demographic sites (SEEDS) is also available. The datasets will contain data in event-history format for approximately 800,000 individuals representing more than 3.7 million person years of observation. INDEPTHStats will have indicators from a further 14 member centres.

In this video, David Lam discusses the effects of youth population growth on sub-Saharan African economics.

In this video, Ernesto Amaral addresses influence of demographic transition on economic development in Brazil.

In a new video interview, Jean-François Kobiané and Moussa Bougma discuss their analyses of the links between family structure, poverty, and child labor in Africa.

This report mainly highlights research results that directly bear on the thematic issues and policy questions that are the focus of the PopPov efforts: the relationship between population growth, reproductive health, and economic outcomes. The body of the report organizes results from many of the studies according to substantive topic areas to facilitate a broad overview of the Hewlett-supported research under the PopPov initiative; the Appendices (A, B, C) include a bibliographic list of published studies, project descriptions, and an overview of projects with their corresponding contributions to the working group agenda.

JM Ian Salas received the 2014 Dorothy S. Thomas Award from the Population Association of America. The honor recognizes his research on consequences of funding disruptions on family planning programs in the Philippines–work he pursued and published as a doctoral student at UCI–as the outstanding graduate student paper on interrelationships among social, economic, and demographic variables. His research found that birth rates responded significantly to swings in public contraceptive supply, and that subsidized contraception helped poor and low-educated women manage their fertility. Salas completed his Ph.D. in Fall 2013 and is currently the David E. Bell Post Doctoral Research Fellow at the Harvard Center for Population & Development Studies. He received the Thomas award at the Population Association of America annual meeting in May.

Osman Sankoh, Executive Director of INDEPTH, recently published a piece on the Lancet website describing the role of research and innovation in the development of low- and middle-income countries. Click the link above to read the full article.

Katerini Storeng and Dominique Behague address the rise of evidence-based advocacy (EBA), a term global-level maternal health advocates have used to indicate the use of scientific evidence to bolster the Safe Motherhood Initiative’s authority in the global health arena. Read the full article in the Medical Anthropology Quarterly.

Work by Murray Leibbrandt, David Lam, Cally Ardington, and other PopPov-supported researchers appear in the latest issue of Development Southern Africa.

The new special issue of The Review of Income and Health includes articles by PopPov Researchers Bertil Tungodden and Ben D’Exelle. “Do Non-Enforceable Contracts Matter? Evidence from an International Lab Experiment,” co-authored by Dr. Tungoden, studies repayment decisions in the presence of non-enforceable loan contracts in Norway and Tanzania. Dr. D’Exelle’s article, “Aid Distribution and Cooperation in Unequal Communities,” examines aid distribution and cooperation in a field lab in rural Nicaragua. Click the link above for the full issue.

The Closing Conference of the DEMTREND Program took place in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso on October 28-30, 2013. The objective of the Conference was to share the results of the analytical work carried out under the DEMTREND Program, which was funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Participants discussed results and papers in progress from all projects. Some of these papers are available on public sites: The impact of fertility on household economic status in Cameroon, Mali and Senegal The effect of the number of siblings on education in sub-Saharan Africa: evidence from a natural experiment Determinants of labor market gender inequalities in Cameroon, Senegal and Mali: the role of human capital and the fertility burden (1, 2) Impacts of School-Based HIV Education on Reported Behavior and Knowledge of Adolescent Girls

Rwanda faces development challenges that stem from several factors: low per capita income, the legacy of the social and political upheaval experienced in the 1990s, and high population density. Low contraceptive use and high rates of fertility among Rwandan women contribute to the country’s population growth and high population density. These factors strain economic and natural resources and potentially contribute to ethnic tensions, such as those that fueled the country’s 1994 genocide, during which up to 1 million Rwandans were murdered. As recently as 2005, only one in 10 married women were using a modern method of contraception; and, at the country’s highest fertility levels in 1983, Rwandan women could expect to have, on average, 8.5 children over a lifetime. This PopPov network research brief summarizes findings of a paper published in 2009 by Dieudonné Muhoza Ndaruhuye and colleagues that provides insight into factors associated with Rwandans’ use of family planning and the country’s population dynamics. Using data from the 2005 Rwanda DHS, the authors looked at four possible explanations for unmet need for contraception and demand for family planning services among reproductive-age women living with a partner: women’s characteristics, their partner’s characteristics, women’s exposure to family planning information, and women’s attitudes and their partner’s perceived attitudes toward contraception. Download the brief above (PDF: 527KB)

Dan Korbel – Senior Research Portfolio Manager, ESRC – discusses the new four year DFID-ESRC programme which aims to fund world class scientific research on economic growth in low income countries with a high potential for impact on policy and practice. Click the link above to watch the full video.

Abiba Longwe is pursuing her doctorate studies in Economics at the Department of Economics of Nijmegen School of Management. Her doctoral dissertation investigates the relationship between sexual reproductive health and poverty reduction in rural communities of Sub-Saharan Africa. By demonstrating the dynamics between family planning initiatives and development, Abiba hopes to educate policymakers on the economic and social incentives of investment in such programs. She has contributed to the NWO/WOTRO PopDev project on Impact of Reproductive Health Services in Sub-Saharan Africa 2008-2012, working closely with Professor Jerome Smits. To learn more about Abiba’s work and this PopDev research project, watch her full-length interview via the link above.

A research proposal to help reduce the enormous burden of post-partum haemorrhage (PPH) developed by icddr,b’s Dr. Aminur Rahman Shaheen has been shortlisted for the multi- million dollar Saving Lives at Birth: A Grand Challenge for Development grant competition. Research proposals are shortlisted based on innovative health solutions that cut across technology, service delivery, and demand. Dr. Shaheen’s study, “Tampostat: A low-cost, self-regulating tamponade for management of postpartum hemorrhage in low-resource settings,” is one of 52 finalists in the competition. All 52 finalists’ innovations are open for on-line voting for a People’s Choice Award until 31 July (5 pm ET). The winner will be announced on 1 August. Learn more about Dr. Shaheen’s innovation on the icddr,b website. To vote please click the link above.

Will Dow presented on the use of incentives in health care at an Expert Group Meeting on “Priorities for Improved Survival: ICPD beyond 2014” at the United Nations Headquarters in New York in October 2013. Dow discussed arguments and evidence on using positive incentives as a development tool to increase the use of health services or improve health behaviors. His presentation and paper discuss ethical concerns, program design, and a wide range of research findings, including a study by deWalque et al on the use of cash incentives to reduce risky sexual behaviors, which was funded as part of the Hewlett PopPov Initiative.

Researchers An-Magritt Jensen and Anne Khasakhala talked to PRB staff about their project on fertility and poverty in two areas of Kenya. They discussed their findings regarding spousal communication and fertility intentions, and highlighted some of the policy implications of their research. Jensen is a professor of Sociology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Khasakhala is a senior lecturer at the Population Studies and Research Institute in Nairobi, Kenya. Read a transcript of the questions and answers at the link above.

Dr. Jotham Musinguzi of Uganda was chosen by the Population Award Committee, a body administered by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), in recognition of his contributions to improving public health. Dr. Musinguzi is a strong advocate of reproductive health as a major component of social and economic development. He played a major role in drafting the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo in 1994, and was actively involved in negotiations on the anti-poverty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). He also played a major role in preparing the Maputo Plan of Action, which was adopted by the African Union in 2006 to help achieve the MDGs in Africa, and contributed to the success of the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning. The 2013 Population Awards will be presented at UN Headquarters in New York in June.

Researcher Anne Kielland spoke with PRB staff about her project on the roles of children in household risk-management strategies in rural Senegal and Benin. She discussed her research methodology and survey strategy, along with findings regarding the effect of poverty on child mobility. Kielland is a researcher at FAFO, in Oslo, Norway. Read a transcript of the questions and answers at the link above.

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation/IIE Dissertation Fellowship program, administered by the Institute of International Education’s Global Learning Programs Division, provides Ph.D. students in either sub-Saharan Africa, the United States, or Canada a maximum of $40,000 to produce sound evidence on the role of population and reproductive health in economic development that could be incorporated into national and international economic planning and decisionmaking. For the 2013-2015 cohort, seven fellows have been awarded. For more information on the 2013 Fellows, please visit the website.

PopPov research from the Netherlands’ Radboud University Nijmegen, Centre for International Development Issues Nijmegen, Nijmegen Centre for Economics; Nijmegen International Centre for Health Systems Research and Education; and Muhimbili University for Health and Allied Sciences in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, looked at the interaction between investments in improving reproductive health and social and economic development. They collected new datasets especially for this project, including the District Panel Database (DPD), which contains subnational level information for 441 units from 25 African countries, for at least two points in time between 1995 and 2010. The DPD has been used for the working paper, “The Impact of Family Planning on Primary School Enrollment in Subnational Areas Within 25 African Countries.” Click the link above to download. The DPD was created by aggregating household-level data from DHS surveys to the level of subnational areas within the countries. Variables included are years of education, level of development, percentage of children ages 8-11 in school at time of interview, average number of children under 6, percentage of women using modern contraceptives, percentage of women accepting family planning, percentage of women with knowledge on modern contraceptives. In particular, see Appendix A on p. 29, which lists in a table information on countries, districts, and episodes included in the study. For more information on the database and how to obtain the data please contact Jeroen Smits, jeroen.smits@fm.ru.nl. See recently published papers by this group: Abiba Longwe and Jeroen Smits, “Family Planning Outcomes and Primary School Attendance in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Studies in Family Planning 43, issue 2 (2012): 127-43. This study examined the relationship between women’s family planning outcomes and primary school enrollment among their children ages 8-11. They found that helping families improve their family planning will increase children’s schooling opportunities and lead to more effective use of household and community resources. Deodatus C. Kakoko et al., “Provision of Family Planning Services in Tanzania: A Comparative Analysis of Public and Private Facilities,” African Journal of Reproductive Health16 no. 4 (2012): 140-8. This study looked at differences between public and private facilities in terms of provision of family planning services. They found that public facilities were more likely to offer modern contraceptives compared to private facilities. Bart Van Rijsbergen and Ben D’Exelle, “Delivery Care in Tanzania: A Comparative Analysis of Use and Preferences,” World Development, available online Nov. 19, 2012. This study combined data from a survey and a choice experiment in Tanzania to compare women’s preferences with real choices of delivery care. They found that less empowered women and women who delivered their latest pregnancy outside a health facility less concerned about the technical quality of care.

PopPov researcher Esther Duflo and colleagues published a final report on the ISAS study in Cameroon, Impacts of School-Based HIV Education on Reported Behavior and Knowledge of Adolescent Girls. The paper describes the outcome of a randomized field experiment to study how teenage girls in Cameroon respond to different school-based HIV education programs. The researchers found that HIV education sessions may not be the best way to increase knowledge and change behavior; but there is no “one-size-fits-all” when it comes to HIV prevention information. They also found information spillovers and behavioral spillovers on pregnancy and schooling among friends. The project, an impact evaluation of a program implemented by the Institut pour la Recherche, le Développement Economique et Social et la Communication (IRESCO), is run by the Jameel-Poverty Action Lab at the Paris School of Economics (J-PAL Europe).

PRB staff interviewed Jan Monteverde Haakonsen, special adviser in the Department of Cooperation and Development Research at the Research Council of Norway (RCN) about RCN’s role in the PopPov research initiative. In the interview, Haakonsen outlines the structure of RCN, and explains that the council acts as an independent adviser to the Norwegian government on research matters. ECONPOP, RCN’s funding scheme under the PopPov initiative, has supported six research projects, and has a total budget of approximately NOK 25 million, or $USD 4.3 million. Research has focused primarily on the role of gender as it relates to reproductive health and demographic issues. Read more about ECONPOP and listen to the audio interview at the link above.

The Population Association of America Annual Meeting will be held May 1-3, in Boston, Massachusetts. The Call for Papers (PDF) is available now. Submissions are made online at the 2014 Annual Meeting Program Website. Deadline for submissions is September 27, 2013. For more information, go to the PAA website.

Data is now available from the “Marriage Transitions in Malawi” (MTM) project. MTM is a panel study of initially never-married women and men, ages 14-26, collected between 2007-2009 in the Salima District in central Malawi. Data were collected to investigate what influences the timing of key life events, such as leaving school, having sex for the first time, and getting married. The study also aimed to identify whether and how socioeconomic conditions, gender, and other social locations affect a person’s risk of acquiring HIV. For access to the data, send a brief description of how you plan to use the data to Kathleen Beegle, kbeegle@worldbank.org, and Michelle Poulin, mpoulin@stanford.edu. More details on the study design and questionnaires are available at https://sites.google.com/site/mtmalawiproject/.

The African Institute for Development Policy (AFIDEP) participated in a high-level panel on “Realizing the Demographic Dividend for Africa,” at the 6th Joint Annual Meetings of the Africa Union Commission Conference of Ministers of Economy and Finance and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning, and Economic Development. The event was held in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, from March 21-26, 2013. The aim of the conference was to discuss how Africa can ensure that it harnesses the demographic dividend. Visit AFIDEP’s website to download a report and five policy briefs on the demographic dividend.

Craig McIntosh and Sarah Baird continue their work on the effects of conditional cash transfers and unconditional cash transfers.

Under the population and poverty (PopPov) initiative, Hewlett partners have awarded research funding to more than 50 principal investigators and 50 Ph.D. candidates. This two-page summary document gives an overview of the initiative and highlights studies supported through PopPov partnerships. Download the two-page brief, The Population and Poverty Research Initiative (1.2 MB).

Kate Belohlav, research associate at PRB, interviewed professor Véronique Filippi about her research on severe obstetric complications in Burkina Faso. Filippi and her research team from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), University of Oslo, and AfricSanté followed women who had experienced near-fatal (“near-miss”) complications during childbirth up to four years after delivery, and documented the socioeconomic and health consequences of having a complicated childbirth. They found that both the women and their children had an increased risk of death as compared to women who had not experienced near-miss complications, which suggests that this group of women would benefit from being identified early and followed closely through postpartum services. Read more about Filippi and listen to the audio interview at the link above.

Dr. Jotham Musinguzi, a strong advocate of reproductive health and family planning, received the 2013 United Nations Population Award on June 28th. The Award is given annually to individuals and institutions for outstanding work in population and in improving public health. Dr. Musinguzi is the Regional Director of Partners in Population and Development (PPD) Africa Regional Office (ARO), an AFP partner. Watch the ceremony at the link above.

Radboud University Nijmegen researcher Judith Westeneng presented a poster on “How Economic Empowerment Reduces Women’s Reproductive Health Vulnerability: Evidence From Northern Tanzania,” at the Seventh Annual PopPov Research Conference in Oslo, Norway. Westeneng and colleague Ben D’Exelle found positive relationships between the increase in women’s access to income-generating activities and the lowering of their reproductive health vulnerability. The theme of women’s empowerment also emerged from ECONPOP. Magnus Hatlebakk of the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) presented a poster on “Gender of Children, Education, and Occupational Choice in Nepal.” Findings indicated a strong son preference in the country. Meanwhile, fellow CMI researcher Vincent Somville presented a poster on “Girls’ Economic Empowerment: The Best Contraceptive?” Fall 2014 is estimated for the project’s follow-up. Both posters are available at the link above. Women’s economic empowerment was also a focus of the 2012 Joint RFP-PopDev Call, namely the impact of reproductive health on empowerment, as measured by economic outcomes at the household and individual levels. See the results on the PopPov website.

Globally, the number of maternal deaths have decreased by nearly one-half over the past two decades. However, there are still adverse consequences for women experiencing near-fatal complications during pregnancy or childbirth. For many women, emergency obstetric care is a catastrophic expenditure that may potentially contribute to a cycle of poverty and poor health. This PopPov network research brief summarizes findings from one study that qualitatively examines how some women in Burkina Faso fared after such “near miss” life-threatening experiences. Download the brief at the link above (PDF: 488KB)

With a population of nearly 30 million and an annual population growth rate of 3.2 percent, Uganda is the third fastest-growing country in the world. Recent Demographic and Health Surveys indicate that only 31 percent of Ugandan women of reproductive age who want to use contraceptives report that they are indeed using a modern effective method. Over 37 percent of women want to postpone or limit childbearing but are not currently using modern contraception—these women have an unmet need for family planning. To respond to the high level of unmet need, the Ugandan government has begun to include family planning in its health program and has acknowledged that a high level of unmet need for family planning may negatively affect women’s health and overall well-being. This PopPov network research brief highlights findings from two recent studies led by Joseph Babigumira and researchers at the University of Washington and in Uganda. Both studies use health economics methods to: Investigate the economic consequences of not responding to unmet need for contraception. Inform policymakers about the benefits of increasing family planning coverage. Download the brief (PDF: 545KB)

Database Developing World (DDW) connects household level datasets for many developing countries, including data for 32 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. DDW also harmonizes and provides district and national variables that can be used to explain household-level processes. More information on the DDW can be found at www.databasedevelopingworld.org/.

In this video interview, PopPov researcher Kelly Jones of the International Food Policy Research Institute discusses research findings from Ghana that show how the Mexico City Policy (the “Global Gag Rule”) had unintended consequences for induced abortion and unintended pregnancies, especially for the poorest and least-educated. Click the link above to view Jones’s interview.

PopPov researcher Esther Duflo and her colleagues recently published a working paper, Punchy Information, Groggy Students? Experimental Evidence From Cameroon on School-Based HIV Education. Since the majority of youths in sub-Saharan Africa are in school until age 15, HIV education in the classroom looks promising as a way to prevent spread of the virus. But success varies, as Duflo et al. summarized in their literature review. The researchers focused on these questions for their study: Why such heterogeneous impact of adult-led and curriculum-based school-based interventions? Is there a “one-size-fits-all” HIV prevention? Communication and social learning: is this guaranteed? Is talking with relatives positively correlated with actual behavior? Based on their randomized field experiment, which studied how teenage girls in Cameroon respond to different school-based HIV education programs, they concluded that punchy information is not important to adopting safer sexual behavior. Rather, their analysis to-date indicates that the repetition of context-specific messages—whether by an outside consultant or school staff—is key to producing behavior change.

In this interview, PopPov researcher Joseph Babigumira of the University of Washington shares insights on the costs and economic consequences that are associated with induced abortions in Uganda. In Uganda, low levels of contraceptive use and widespread unmet need for family planning lead to many unintended pregnancies and unplanned births. Sexually active women who do not use contraceptives and do not want to have more children are consequently at high risk of having an abortion should they become pregnant. However, since abortions are illegal in Uganda, they are usually performed in clandestine, unhygienic environments by undertrained and unskilled practitioners. Babigumira’s research findings analyze a wide range of health complications and adverse socioeconomic outcomes that are associated with induced abortions. Click the link above to watch the YouTube video interview and browse the Research section of this website to view more interviews with PopPov researchers.

PopPov researcher Pieter Hooimeijer and colleagues published an article in Education Research International on free education in Rwanda. They found that the government introduction of free education is only one step toward making the system more equitable. Although the effort has been very successful for the majority of primary school-aged children, foster children and orphans are still being discriminated against. Some children, particularly girls, leave before completing school.

PopPov researcher Oystein Kravdal’s work on the importance of community education for fertility was published in Demographic Research. Kravdal’s study is based on DHS surveys from 28 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Among his findings: expansion of education in Africa may affect fertility through an additional “spill-over” effect. For example, over the last decade, a woman’s birth rate decreased (or remained stable) with an increase in the average education in the census enumeration area in which she lives.

In this video, Alice Mesnard of City University London describes findings from research that examines relationships between health service access and distribution, the spread of infectious diseases, and migration. In particular, the research investigates the largely unexplored role of migration in contributing to health-related risks and to the spread of chronic and acute illnesses. The research results also identifies the pathways through which poor access to health services and increased disease prevalence may lead to increased migration, which in turn has important health and economic consequences. Click the link above to view Mesnard’s interview.

A nutrition paper by PopPov researchers was highlighted in Development Impact, The World Bank’s blog. Economist Markus Goldstein describes the study in Malawi, “Household Responses to Information on Child Nutrition,” as “one with a twist—they look not only at nutrition outcomes, but they also try and figure out where these might be coming from—and hence also look at labor supply.” Malawi is a country where, Goldstein writes, “48 percent of the children under 5 are stunted—which is the second highest rate in sub-Saharan Africa.”

This PopPov network research brief highlights the findings from recent studies on teenage childbearing in South Africa, in which analysts examined the causal relationships between teen fertility, educational attainment, and health outcomes in urban and rural regions in South Africa. The studies use data from: The Cape Area Panel Study, which examined the effects of teen motherhood on the education outcomes of women as well as health and educational outcomes of children born to teen mothers in metropolitan Cape Town. The Africa Centre Study, which focused on the educational and health consequences of childbearing for black South African teen mothers in the rural KwaZulu-Natal region.

In a blog post on the World Bank’s website, PopPov researcher Berk Ozler describes research he and colleagues are expanding upon in Malawi. Their original experiment compared a conditional cash transfer (CCT) program contingent on school attendance to an unconditional cash transfer (UCT) program. They found that increases in income for adolescents in the UCT program improved their mental health (discussed in their forthcoming paper in The Journal of Human Resources) and that increased income decreased girls’ risk of sexually transmitted diseases. Their follow-up work looks at whether cash transfers to adolescent girls could not only improve their welfare in the long term but also the lives of future generations, using the same group of girls, many of whom are now married and have children. Ozler and his team are collecting data from the young women to determine whether short-term benefits are translating into better labor market outcomes, more empowerment, happier marriages, and more life satisfaction. They are also collecting data from their children to see if they are healthier and have improved early childhood development outcomes.

In this video interview, PopPov researcher Gervais Beninguisse of IFORD Cameroon shares research findings on the relationships between poverty and unmet need for reproductive health services among adolescents and youth in Central Africa. Click the link above to view the interview.

In a video interview, William Dow of the Berkeley School of Public Health describes his PopPov-related work, an impact evaluation of a combined social and psychosocial intervention in southern Tanzania. Click the link above to watch the interview. “Incentivising Safe Sex: A Randomised Trial of Conditional Cash Transfers for HIV and Sexually Transmitted Infection Prevention in Rural Tanzania,” co-authored by Dow, fellow PopPov researcher Damien De Walque, and other colleagues, was recently published in BMJ Open.

This PopPov network brief by Shareen Joshi of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service examines the emerging evidence base for answering three questions about the relationship between reproductive health (RH) and three important areas of human capital development: Do healthier women with fewer children invest more in human capital? Do women participate more in labor markets? Does better RH increase a woman’s ability to earn and save more, and thus help her and her family escape poverty?

In this video interview, PopPov researcher Pieter Hooimeijer of Utrecht University shares research findings from a study conducted in Rwanda. The study examined women’s desired number of children, the actual number of children, and life chances of children. One question examined is how high fertility affects education for children. He notes the implications of findings at the individual and the national level, highlighting the gap between desired fertility, actual fertility, and the importance of local conditions. He discusses how reproductive health investments can break the cycle of decreasing agricultural productivity, high population growth, and increasing poverty. Click the link above to view Hooimeijer’s interview.

Reproductive health services, in particular family planning and maternal health services, can help women avoid unplanned births, unsafe abortions, and pregnancy-related disabilities. Through modern contraception, couples have a safe and reliable way to have the number of children they want. With smaller families, women spend less time dealing with pregnancy and child care and have more time for work outside the home. Large families can be a drain on household resources, with school fees being the largest cash expenditure in many households. With smaller families, women can stay healthier, become more economically productive, and have more opportunities for education, training, and employment. At the country level, women’s increased working outside the home also leads to an expanding labor force, which produces substantial economic benefits. This PopPov network research brief highlights findings from a recent study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Ghana, Legon. The study examined the associations between reproductive health, fertility, and economic outcomes for women living in the urban area of Accra, Ghana, and investigated this “health-wealth relationship” by analyzing the effects of fertility and family size on: Women’s reproductive health status. Female labor force participation. Employment status of mothers. Women’s wages and earnings. Download the brief at the link above (PDF: 568KB) Watch a video interview with researcher Allan G. Hill on the PopPov website. Browse the Research section of this website to view more interviews with PopPov researchers. For related research on other issues pertaining to women’s health in Accra, see the editorial in the June 2012 Ghana Medical Journal, and browse the rest of the issue.

Couples receive many health and socioeconomic benefits from having fewer children, and having access to modern contraception helps them to have the number of children they desire. To improve couples’ access to modern contraception, governments and international organizations in many low-income countries distribute contraceptives either at subsidized prices or for free. Often, these subsidies account for a substantial portion of the public budget allocated to support maternal and child health. But if subsidies are removed and prices increased, how would the price of contraceptives be affected? This PopPov network research brief summarizes the work of researchers Christopher McKelvey, Duncan Thomas, and Elizabeth Frankenberg, in examining the impact of a drastic change in prices and household resources on women’s use of contraceptives. They used survey data from the Indonesia Family Life Survey. Download the brief at the link above (PDF: 535KB)