Soap Operas and Fertility: Evidence from Brazil
Soap Operas and Fertility: Evidence from Brazil Eliana La Ferrara Alberto Chong Suzanne Duryea This version: October 2008 Abstract What are the eects of television, and of role models portrayed in TV programs, on individual behavior? We focus on fertility choices in Brazil, a country where soap operas (novelas)portrayfamiliesthatare much smaller than in reality. We exploit dierences in the timing of entry into dierent markets of Rede Globo, the network that has an eective monopoly on novelas production in this country. Using Census data for the period 1970-1991, we nd that women living in areas covered by the Globo signal have signicantly lower fertility. The eect is strongest for women of lower socioeconomic status and for women in the central and late phases of their fertility cycle, consistent with stopping behavior. The result is robust to placebo treatments and does not appear to be driven by selection in Globo entry. Finally, we provide suggestive evidence that novelas,andnotjusttelevision,aected individual choices. First, people living in areas covered by the signal were more likely to name their children after novela characters. Second, entry of a network that relied on imported shows did not have a signicant impact on fertility. Third, the impact of Globo presence was strongest for women close in age to the main novela characters. W Bocconi University and IGIER; Inter-American Development Bank. We thank Stefano DellaVigna, Elsa Artadi, Abigail Barr, Francesco Billari, Paula Bustos, Erica Field, Andrea Ichino, Tommy Murphy, Hugo Nopo, Ben Olken, Ugo Panizza, Michele Pellizzari, Fabrizio Zilibotti and seminar participants at NYU, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, University of Zurich, Oxford University, Bocconi University, University of Bologna, CEPR 2007 Development Eco- nomics Conference in Stockholm, BREAD 2007 workshop in Princeton for helpful comments.
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