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A comparison of approaches for estimating the effect of women’s education on the probability of using modern contraceptive methods in Malawi
Authors: Luca Zanin, Rosalba Radice, Giampiero Marra
Source: Social Science Journal, Available online 24 January 2014
Topic(s): Contraception
Education
Country: Africa
  Malawi
Published: FEB 2014
Abstract: The aim of this study is to estimate the effect of education on the probability of marriedMalawian women using modern contraceptive methods by accounting for both observedand unobserved confounders. We conduct a sensitivity analysis and compare the resultsof naive models with instrumental variable models to account for the potential endogene-ity of education. Our findings demonstrate conflicting results between the two modellingapproaches. The naive models report smaller education effects on the probability of usingmodern contraceptive methods compared to instrumental variable models. We also findthat by relaxing the functional form assumption on the effect of continuous covariates, usinga flexible instrumental variable model, the education’s effect follows a positive, nonlinearpattern. This finding is not observed with a classic instrumental variable model.