Population policies are defined here as voluntary programs which help people control their fertility and expect to … improve their lives. There are few studies of the long-run effects of policy-induced changes in fertility on the welfare of … women, such as policies that subsidize the diffusion and use of best practice birth control technologies. Evaluation of the …

considers a country in Sub-Saharan Africa and finds that parental gender preferences do affect fertility behavior and shape … traditional social institutions with negative effects on adult women's health and well-being. Using individual-level data for … Nigeria, the paper shows that, compared to women with first-born sons, women with first-born daughters have (and desire) more …