The mother-in-law effect: Heterogeneous impacts of counseling on family planning take-up in Jordan

How does the presence of a woman’s mother-in-law impact the effectiveness of a family planning program? Using data from an experiment that randomly assigned married women to receive either individual or couple’s family planning (FP) counseling in Jordan, we document the heterogeneity of treatment effects on modern contraception take-up by mother-in-law (MIL) co-residence status. For women residing with their MIL, woman-only counseling significantly increases FP take-up by 33 percentage points (over 11% in control). The effect of couples counseling among women living with their MIL is small and not statistically different from zero. Women not living with their MIL respond both to woman-only and couples FP counseling, with an increase of 7 and 16 percentage points in FP take-up, respectively. Results controlling for covariates and inverse propensity weighted matching suggest that the difference in treatment effects is not driven by the selection of observables into differential MIL co-residence status. Non-spousal family members can have important roles in determining the effectiveness of FP interventions.