ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021
Thirty-five years later: Long-term effects of the Matlab maternal and child health/family planning program on older women's well-being.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Does family planning use empower women? A systematic review of the evidence.Reproductive health · 2025Pooled it
- The effect of nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive interventions on the double burden of malnutrition in low-income and middle-income countries: a systematic review.The Lancet. Global health · 2024Pooled it
- Factors associated with the unmet need for spacing and limiting family planning: Evidence from a national survey.PLOS global public health · 2026Article
- Contraception to women's economic empowerment: A narrative review.World development · 2025Review
- Article
- Migration, Gender, and Families: The Effects of Spousal Migration on Women's Empowerment.Demography · 2024Article
- Fertility Has Been Framed: Why Family Planning Is Not a Silver Bullet for Sustainable Development.Studies in comparative international development · 2023Article
- The effects of spousal migration on perinatal healthcare utilization.BMC pregnancy and childbirth · 2023Article
- Women's empowerment and fertility preferences of married women: analysis of demographic and health survey'2016 in Timor-Leste.AIMS public health · 2022Article
- Reduced fertility from better access to contraception may not improve women's health.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Thirty-five years later: Long-term effects of the Matlab maternal and child health/family planning program on older women's well-being.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Family planning programs are believed to have substantial long-term benefits for women's health and well-being, yet few studies have established either extent or direction of long-term effects. The Matlab, Bangladesh, maternal and child health/family planning (MCH/FP) program afforded a 12-y period of well-documented differential access to services. We evaluate its impacts on women's lifetime fertility, adult health, and economic outcomes 35 y after program initiation. We followed 1,820 women who were of reproductive age during the differential access period (born 1938-1973) from 1978 to 2012 using prospectively collected data from the Matlab Health and Demographic Surveillance System and the 1996 and 2012 Matlab Health and Socioeconomic Surveys. We estimated intent-to-treat single-difference models comparing treatment and comparison area women. MCH/FP significantly increased contraceptive use, reduced completed fertility, lengthened birth intervals, and reduced age at last birth, but had no significant positive impacts on health or economic outcomes. Treatment area women had modestly poorer overall health (+0.07 SD) and respiratory health (+0.12 SD), and those born 1950-1961 had significantly higher body mass index (BMI) in 1996 (0.76 kg/m
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