Estimating Causal Effects from Family Planning Health Communication Campaigns: An Analysis of the “Your Health, Your Wealth” Communication Campaign in Menya Villages, Egypt

Paul Hutchinson, Tulane University
Dominique Meekers, Tulane University

We use data on a panel of reproductive age women in Egypt to examine the effects of the multimedia health communication campaign “Your Health, Your Wealth” (“Sehatek Serwetek”) on family planning knowledge, attitudes and behaviors. Importantly, we control for both observed and unobserved heterogeneity in the sample of women who self-report recall of the messages. Exploiting the unique panel nature of the data, we estimate program effects via difference-in-differences (DID) and fixed effects estimators. We conduct tests of exogeneity of program exposure and examine the performance of the above estimators relative to methods that assume exogeneity of exposure or that control for potentially endogenous exposure using only post-treatment cross-sectional data. We find little evidence of endogenous exposure. Further, the DID estimator – utilizing the panel nature of the data - provides the most conservative estimate of the effects of the “Your Health is Your Wealth” campaign on reproductive health outcomes.