Age at First Child Does Education Delay Fertility Timing? The Case of Kenya
Completing additional years of education necessarily entails spending more time in school. There is naturally a rather mechanical effect of schooling on fertility if women tend not to have children while continuing to attend high school or college,...
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2012
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| Online Access: | http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/main?menuPK=64187510&pagePK=64193027&piPK=64187937&theSitePK=523679&menuPK=64187510&searchMenuPK=64187283&siteName=WDS&entityID=000158349_20090210091332 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4029 |
| Summary: | Completing additional years of education
necessarily entails spending more time in school. There is
naturally a rather mechanical effect of schooling on
fertility if women tend not to have children while
continuing to attend high school or college, thus delaying
the beginning of and shortening their reproductive life.
This paper uses data from the Kenyan Demographic and Health
Surveys of 1989, 1993, 1998, and 2003 to uncover the impact
of staying one more year in school on teenage fertility. To
get around the endogeneity issue between schooling and
fertility preferences, the analysis uses the 1985 Kenyan
education reform as an instrument for years of education.
The authors find that adding one more year of education
decreases by at least 10 percentage points the probability
of giving birth when still a teenager. The probability of
having one's first child before age 20, when having at
least completed primary education, is about 65 percent;
therefore, for this means a reduction of about 15 percent in
teenage fertility rates for this group. One additional year
of school curbs the probability of becoming a mother each
year by 7.3 percent for women who have completed at least
primary education, and 5.6 percent for women with at least a
secondary degree. These results (robust to a wide array of
specifications) are of crucial interest to policy and
decision makers who set up health and educational policies.
This paper shows that investing in education can have
positive spillovers on health. |
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