Free Primary Education, Fertility, and Women's Access to the Labor Market : Evidence from Ethiopia
This article investigates the causal relationship between women's schooling and fertility by exploiting variation generated by the removal of school fees in Ethiopia. The increase in schooling caused by the reform is identified using both geog...
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2020
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/463371578408927261/Free-Primary-Education-Fertility-and-Womens-Access-to-the-Labor-Market-Evidence-from-Ethiopia http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33154 |
| Summary: | This article investigates the causal
relationship between women's schooling and fertility by
exploiting variation generated by the removal of school fees
in Ethiopia. The increase in schooling caused by the reform
is identified using both geographic variation in the
intensity of its impact and temporal variation generated by
the timing of the implementation. The model finds that the
removal of school fees led to an increase in schooling for
Ethiopian women and that each additional year of schooling
led to a reduction in fertility. An investigation of the
underlying mechanisms linking schooling and fertility finds
that the decline in fertility is associated with an increase
in labor market opportunity and a reduction in women's
ideal number of children. |
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