"Sex in Marriage is a Divine Gift": For whom ? Evidence from the Manila contraceptive ban

We analyze the tradeoff between child quantity and quality in de- veloping countries by estimating the effect of family size on child's ed- ucation in urban Philippines. To isolate exogenous changes in family size, we exploit a policy shock: in the late 1990s, the mayor of Manila enacted a municipal ban on modern contraceptives. Since other com- parable cities in the Manila metropolitan area were not affected by the ban, this allows us to implement a difference-in-difference estimation of the effect of family size. We also exploit the fact that older moth- ers were less likely to become pregnant during the ban. Our results indicate that the contraceptive ban led to a significant increase in fam- ily size. They also provide evidence of a quality-quantity tradeoff : increased family size led to a sizable decrease in school performance.