The LCDS will welcome Mahesh Venkat Karra, Associate Professor of Population and Family Health at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, for an upcoming seminar exploring new experimental evidence on the wider impacts of family planning access on women and children’s lives. The seminar will take place in the Butler Room, Nuffield College, 2:00-3:00pm on Monday 9th February.
Professor Karra, who also directs Columbia’s Program on Women’s Empowerment Research (POWER), is a development and health economist whose work examines the links between population dynamics, health, and economic development in low- and middle-income countries. His research combines experimental and non-experimental methods, with extensive field experience across Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. Before joining Columbia in 2025, he was a tenured Associate Professor of Global Development Policy at Boston University. He has also worked with organisations including the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and the Population Council, and serves as Co-Editor of Studies in Family Planning.
In his seminar, titled “Family Planning, Children’s Human Capital, and Women’s Well-Being: Experimental Evidence from Urban Malawi,” Professor Karra will present findings from a randomized controlled trial designed to identify the causal effects of improving access to family planning and reproductive health services.
The study followed married women in Malawi who were either pregnant or had recently given birth. Participants were randomly assigned either to a control group or to receive a comprehensive two-year package of support, including family counselling, free transportation to a high-quality family planning clinic, and reimbursements for family planning services and the treatment of contraceptive-related side effects.
The intervention led to significant increases in postpartum contraceptive use, particularly long-acting methods. Women in the intervention group were substantially less likely to become pregnant within two years of a previous birth. Beyond fertility outcomes, the study documents broader economic benefits: women offered the intervention were more likely to be employed, with gains concentrated in wage-earning work.
The research also finds improvements in children’s health and development. Children born to mothers in the intervention group were taller for their age, less likely to be stunted, and showed higher scores on measures of cognitive development.
Taken together, the findings suggest that improving access to family planning can have far-reaching benefits, extending beyond reproductive health to women’s economic participation and children’s human capital formation.