Axinn and Barber 2001

Theoretical Framework

Individual-Level Links Between Education and Fertility Limitation

• Parent’s schooling
  • Educated women: gain new opportunities for status attainment, education = increased opportunity costs of childbearing for women, reduce their desire for children
  • Structural/demand theories
  • Ideational theories
  • 5 related mechanisms that link parents’ education to childbearing behaviour
    • Contraception
    • Western family values → small families
    • Weakened historical family values
    • Increased consumption aspirations
    • Increased contraceptive use
• Children’s schooling
  • Wealth flow theory - Caldwell
  • Children’s schooling: increased costs of children
  • Quantity-quality trade-off
  • Limiting quantity of children to increase the educational attainment (quality) of children
  • Mechanisms:
    • New expenses
    • Less influence from parents → children = less value to parents
    • Increased children independence

Community-Level Links Between Education and Fertility Limitation

• Proliferation of schools → mass education
• Proximity of schools = limits fertility
  • Neighbors’ childbearing behavior affects fertility
  • Presence of schools changes views of childhood
  • Associated with the spread of government services

Results

The Temporal Sequence of Community Change

• Schools spread before health or bus services
• Average time to the nearest school declined earlier than the average time to the nearest health/bus service
• Mass education: promotes fertility limitation

Childhood Community Characteristics

• Living near a school in childhood: limits childbearing in adulthood + increases use of contraception
• Living near a health post or a bus service
  • Increases use of contraception

Individual-Level Experiences With Education

• Husband’s measures of education have a positive influence on permanent contraceptive use
  • More education = more contraceptive use

Current Community Characteristics

• Women who live in neighborhoods with a high degree of social change
  • More likely to limit their childbearing because of nearby educational opportunities

Childbearing Experiences

• Women who send their children to school have more chances of adopting a permanent contraceptive method
  • This leads to fertility limitation

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