Can watching soap operas make you infertile?

Well, no. But a new working paper suggests that Brazilian soap operas (telenovelas) have subtly encouraged poor women to bear fewer children.

The researchers compare fertility patterns in areas covered and not covered by the near-monopoly producer of soap operas in Brazil. These shows tend to portray families that are much smaller than in reality, and so the authors argue the effect is one of role modeling. It’s a clever article and a good example of how to creatively approach (and test for) a quasi-experiment.

This reminds me of work by Betsy Paluck, who has looked at the effect of radio soap operas on peace building and racial prejudice in Rwanda. In her case, however, she managed to randomize receipt of the program, comparing its effects to a soap opera communicating health messages.

I’m curious, can we account for role modeling in economic theory? Pointers to papers welcome.

5 Responses

  1. Not to get bogged down in detail but as a fertility researcher it pains me to see you even say “make you infertile” when talking about a complex process that may lower fertility. Lower fertility is not equal to infertility.

    Interesting article though. Thanks for sharing!

    Sara

  3. I’d forgotten the Jensen/Oster paper. And the mechanism there could be role modeling — showing villagers what modern life is like.

    Conservative cultures many times try to control access to modern models of dress and behavior for the fear of change it will bring about through change in tastes I suppose — and tranmission of knowledge (say, about birth control).

  4. Also check out Emily Oster and Robert Jensen’s paper on cable tv and female status in India (here).

  5. It’s not a response to your bleg (for studies of economics and role modeling), but you may be familiar with Olken’s work (and perhaps it is referenced in the papers you mention):

    According to Olken’s research, in Indonesia, where TV coverage isn’t yet universal, one finds that “better signal reception, which is associ­ated with more time spent watching television and listening to radio, is associated with sub­stantially lower levels of participation in social activities and with lower self-reported measures of trust.” This, he notes, has had a deleterious effect on political and social par­ticipation: “The main results suggest that each additional channel of television reception is associated with 7 percent fewer social groups existing in the village, and with each adult in the village attending 12 per­cent fewer group meetings.” That would seem to confirm Putnam’s thesis. But the results were nuanced. Olken noted that “despite the impact on social capital, improved [TV] reception does not appear to affect village governance, at least as measured by discussions in village-level meetings.”

    http://www.american.com/archive/2008/january-february-magazine-contents/graft-paper