Economics and Finance Seminar: Graziella Bertocchi (Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia)

Family Planning and Ethnic Heritage: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa (with Arcangelo Dimico and Chiara Falco)

Using ethnographic, ecological, and folklore data for sub-Saharan Africa, we investigate the role played by postpartum sexual abstinence, an extensively documented practice that in preindustrial societies finds its biological justification as a means to safeguard child survival. We show that the duration of contemporary postpartum abstinence increases with that of ancestral postpartum sex taboos within a woman’s ethnic group; raises fertility; lengthens birth intervals though not sufficiently to meet recommended guidelines; is detrimental for children’s health; is associated with lower age at first birth and female disempowerment; and is adopted