Eduard van der Merwe

Religion shapes individuals' beliefs and behavior, but whether and how religious leaders can change social norms remains unclear. I study this in the context of family planning in Meru County, Kenya, using primary data from reproductive-age women. A central challenge to identification is that community behavior, scripture, and the stance of religious leaders are entangled in observed choices. Using a randomized vignette experiment that independently varies these forces, I disentangle them and identify the weight women place on each in a discrete-choice model with social interactions. I show that religious leaders influence women's decisions through two distinct channels. First, they directly shift women's utility. Their support for family planning increases women's willingness to adopt it, and this effect is larger than the corresponding effect of opposition. Second, religious leaders alter how women respond to the behavior of other women in their community. When a leader takes an explicit position, women place less weight on others' behavior. As a result, religious messages have their largest effects when they run counter to prevailing community behavior. I corroborate the experimental findings at scale using difference-in-differences estimates from a faith-based family-planning program, showing that program effects are largest in places where religious leaders are more trusted.