Thursday, October 18

The link between Female education and fertility

It is pretty much accepted that more educated a woman is, the lower is the fertility. Here's a paper which checks out this relationship for Nigeria.

Osili, Una Okonkwo, Long, Bridget Terry, Does Female Schooling
Reduce Fertility? Evidence from Nigeria, Journal of Development Economics (2007),

The literature generally points to a negative relationship between female education and fertility. Citing this pattern, policymakers have advocated educating girls and young women as a means to reduce population growth and foster sustained economic and social welfare in developing countries. This paper tests whether the relationship between fertility and education is indeed causal by investigating the introduction of universal primary education in Nigeria. Exploiting differences in program exposure by region and age, the paper presents reduced form and instrumental variables estimates of the impact of female education on fertility. The analysis suggests that increasing female education by one year reduces early fertility by 0.26 births.

Another quote from the conclusion was very interesting:

Results from Nigeria suggest that the change in education policy had a significant impact on both female education and fertility decisions. At the mean, for each additional 100 naira per capita spent on primary school classroom construction in 1976, we estimate a 2-year increase in educational attainment...........Using a Solow growth framework, Knowles et. al. (2002) estimate that a 1- percent increase in female education would increase average GDP levels by 0.37 percent.

No comments: