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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