Household Recombination, Retrospective Evaluation, and the Effects on Consumption of a Health and Family Planning Intervention

Andrew Foster, Brown University
Sveta Milusheva, Brown University

Analysis of the long term effects of social programs using household survey data requires an understanding of patterns of household recombination--that is the processes by which households divide and fuse. In this paper we examine, in particular, the effects on educational mobility of a well-known maternal and child health and family planning program in Matlab Bangladesh. Using a novel resampling procedure that relies on longitudinally collected demographic surveillance data, we correct for biases that arise from household recombination that occurred subsequent to a baseline census but prior to the collection of the first round of detailed economic data. Our results suggest that the program resulted in a small increase in consumption per capita, decreases in family sizes, small changes in household recombination, and increases in child schooling except among the lowest education households. We also show that approximate corrections for these biases using more limited data are reasonably effective.