climate change

Investigating the Relationship Between Growing Season Quality and Childbearing Goals

We use rich, spatially referenced data from the Performance Monitoring for Action (PMA) individual surveys with detailed information on childbearing preferences and family planning decisions. Building on recent advances in remote monitoring of seasonal agriculture, we construct multiple vegetation measures capturing different dimensions of growing season conditions across varying time frames. Overall, our findings suggest that, in some settings, women strategically respond to growing season conditions by adjusting fertility aspirations or family planning use.