Saving During Pregnancy in Zambia

In many low-income settings, pregnant women continue to face financial barriers to accessing safe delivery services, largely due to high costs associated with transportation to a health facility and the materials needed for a safe delivery. Likely barriers to saving during pregnancy include resource constraints associated with poverty, as we all behavioral bottlenecks including uncertainty regarding total savings needed and the tendency to be “present-biased”, i.e., to weight current financial demands higher than future ones. To address these barriers, researchers have partnered with World Vision to develop an innovative set of home-based and village savings group interventions designed to empower and support pregnant women to save.