The More the Merrier? The Effect of Family Size and Birth Order on Children's Education,
With positive signals for fertility decline emerging in sub-Saharan Africa, and development economists debating the potential for African countries to run across a "demographic dividend," it'due south a proficient time to look more closely at the information linking female person teaching and childbearing.
In a nutshell, data show that the college the level of a adult female's educational attainment, the fewer children she is likely to bear. Given that fewer children per woman and delayed marriage and childbearing could mean more resources per child and meliorate health and survival rates for mothers and children, this is an of import link. . But how much of this is causation and how much is correlation?
A negative correlation is most clearly seen between different levels of female education and the full fertility rate (TFR) in a population. TFR is the number of children a woman tin can expect to have over her lifetime given electric current rates of age-specific fertility. The first figure (below) shows TFR trends over time in Ethiopia, Ghana and Kenya among women with varying levels of educational attainment. What it shows for all three countries is that there are striking differences in TFR betwixt women with no schooling and women with a high school education.
In Ghana, women with a high school education accept a TFR between 2 and 3, whereas those with no education have a TFR of about half-dozen, even equally recently as 2008. Similarly, women with a high schoolhouse pedagogy in Ethiopia take a TFR of ane.iii.
Relationship between Female Educational activity and Fertility: Federal democratic republic of ethiopia, Ghana and Kenya
Data from Demographic and Health Surveys in Federal democratic republic of ethiopia, Ghana and Kenya [1988-2011]
In considering whether female education actually drives a decline in the TFR, one might ask whether the opposite is truthful – exercise women who prefer smaller families want to study longer? However, the evidence from sub-Saharan Africa clearly supports the causal role of female person education in fertility decline. For case, an education reform in Kenya that increased the length of primary education by a year resulted in increased female educational attainment, and delayed marriage and fertility. I randomized control trial found that reducing the cost of school uniforms in Kenya not only reduced dropout rates, but too reduced teenage matrimony and childbearing. Another study found that increasing female educational activity by one year in Nigeria reduced early fertility past 0.26 births.
Allow's take a closer look at the causal link in Ethiopia, where 61% of women with no schooling have a child before turning xx compared to 16% of women with 8 years of schooling. In 1994, the country did abroad with schoolhouse fees, instituted schoolhouse lunches in rural areas, increased the education upkeep and allowed local language classes. The 1986-built-in cohort of girls came of school age nether the sometime system, while those born in 1987 were exposed to the reforms. The 1987-built-in cohort showed an increase in schooling of 0.8 years.
A study (Pradhan and Canning 2013) of educational activity and fertility in Ethiopia estimated that an boosted year of schooling in Federal democratic republic of ethiopia would lead to a seven percentage indicate reduction in the probability of teenage birth and a 6 percent bespeak decrease in the probability of marriage. These are large effects, suggesting that women with eight years of schooling would accept a fertility rate 53 percentage points lower than those with no schooling at all, and are consequent with observed data.
Why does female education have a directly effect on fertility? The economic theory of fertility suggests an incentive effect: more educated women have higher opportunity costs of bearing children in terms of lost income. The household bargaining model suggests that more educated women are ameliorate able to support themselves and take more than bargaining power, including on family size.
According to the ideation theory, more educated women may learn different ideas of desired family size through school, customs, and exposure to global advice networks. Finally, more than educated women know more about prenatal care and child health, and hence might have lower fertility because of greater conviction that their children volition survive.
Female person education has a greater impact on historic period of marriage and delayed fertility than male instruction. Although fertility falls when both male and female levels of education ascension together, at that place is a large gap between male and female secondary schoolhouse enrollment in sub-Saharan Africa (see effigy below). Achieving gender parity in educational attainment could thus have a substantial effect on fertility rates.
Male-Female Didactics Gap in Sub-Saharan Africa--Secondary Enrollment
It is important to note, withal, that education is not the but factor influencing TFR. Global information suggest that in both 1980 and 2010, countries showed a strong negative correlation betwixt female educational attainment and TFR. However, countries have lower fertility in 2010 compared to similar countries in 1980. This suggests that other factors—access to family planning, reduced child mortality, access to piece of work opportunities—may as well influence the number of children a woman bears.
Follow Elina Pradhan on Twitter: @epradhan
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Report: Africa's Demographic Transition: Dividend or Disaster?
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Source: https://blogs.worldbank.org/health/female-education-and-childbearing-closer-look-data
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