An individual's or couple's decisions on when to have children or start a family may also have social and economic consequences on the community at large. RAND's family planning research spans various populations and socioeconomic backgrounds in Western as well as developing countries and addresses such topics as fertility and infertility, birth control, abortion, reproductive technologies, child welfare, household economic security, and community impact.
Commentary
If this issue were to be decided on the basis of public health benefits, the outcome would be clear: Condoms indisputably prevent both unintended pregnancies and the spread of sexually transmitted infections, writes Chloe Bird.
Commentary
As we look for ways to provide efficient, high-quality and cost-effective healthcare to more Americans, states may study California as a potential model for how to do more to deliver on what the Affordable Care Act has to offer women, while saving money at the same time, writes Chloe Bird.
Commentary
As we look for ways to provide efficient, high-quality, and cost-effective health care to more Americans, we can't afford to ignore women's health issues, including reproductive health care and the cost savings that contraceptive access provides, writes Chloe Bird.
Journal Article
The shorter the IPI following a miscarriage, the more likely the subsequent pregnancy is to result in a live birth.
Commentary
Reliable birth control contributed to economic development by reducing women's risk of dropping out of school associated with early childbearing and high fertility rates, contributing in turn to increases in women's labor force participation, the continuity of their careers, and the standard of living of women, children and families, writes Chloe Bird.
Multimedia
An interactive graphic shows four major global trends through 2050: the shifts in working-age populations, the rise of the oldest old, elderly dependency ratios, and youth dependency ratios.
Journal Article
If used properly, the lactational amenorrhea method (LAM) can be a valuable family planning tool, particularly in low-income countries.
Journal Article
The authors investigate the direct and long-run effects of fertility on employment in Europe, estimating dynamic models of labor supply under different assumptions regarding the exogeneity of fertility and modeling assumptions related to initial conditions, unobserved heterogeneity and serial correlation in the error terms.
Tool
The Matlab Health and Socio-economic Survey, conducted in 1996, provides a unique microlevel data set for research on aging. In particular, these new data will support in-depth analyses — not possible with existing survey data — on interrelated topics having to do with life-cycle investments in the physical, economic, and social well-being of adults and the elderly.
Journal Article
Clinic violence reduces abortion services in targeted areas; however, once travel is taken into account, the overall effect of the violence is much smaller.
Tool
The Indonesian Family Life Survey is an ongoing, longitudinal survey begun in 1993 that represents about 83% of the Indonesian population and includes over 30,000 individuals living in 13 of the country's 27 provinces.
Tool
The Malaysian Family Life Surveys were conducted in 1976-1977 and 1988-1989. The surveys collected detailed current and retrospective information on family structure, fertility, economic status, education, and more from a partially-overlapping sample of more than 4,000 individuals and households.
Report
What can governments do to address the demographic challenge? RAND Europe examines population ageing: consequences and possible solutions.
Journal Article
Previous studies have demonstrated both large gains in efficiency and reductions in bias by incorporating population information in regression estimation with sample survey data.
Journal Article
The authors use data from the Matlab Demographic Surveillance System on nearly 94,000 singleton live births that occurred between 1987 and 2002 to investigate the extent to which the change in mortality over this period can be explained by changes in repr
Journal Article
American Indian groups exhibit some of the highest and earliest fertility. This comparison between Cherokee and white youth in Appalachia found that the main difference in attitudes toward childbearing was the degree of latitude for the timing of having children vis-a-vis other major life events.
Report
A policy analysis of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (e.g. IVF, ICSI) regulation, funding, and health consequences in France, Italy and the UK.
Journal Article
Develops a metric for revisions to subjective expectations and proposes a survey design strategy that enables the estimation of the metric. As an application, analyzes how women update expectations about the effectiveness of contraception methods.
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