Leveraging Financial and Peer Support to Improve Women's Reproductive Agency in India

Please Join Catalina Herrera Almanza to discuss agency in the domain of contraceptive and reproductive decision-making as a fundamental determinant of women's well-being.

We experimentally evaluate two approaches aimed at improving women's reproductive agency in rural India. We offered treated women subsidized family planning services at a local clinic. Additionally, we enabled a subset of treated women to incentivize others to visit the clinic with them, thereby enabling them to leverage peer support to overcome mobility barriers.

Although women who received just the subsidy experienced a significant increase in their clinic visits and contraceptive use relative to the control group, offering both the subsidy and the option to leverage peer support was more effective in strengthening reproductive agency and peer engagement for women who faced greater intrahousehold opposition to contraceptive use.