Female Employment reduces Fertility in Rural Senegal

Goedele Van den Broeck and Miet Maertens

No 212206, 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy from International Association of Agricultural Economists

Abstract: The recent horticultural export boom in Senegal has created new off-farm wage employment opportunities for the rural population, especially for women. We hypothesise that female wage employment may lower fertility rates through an income effect, an empowerment effect and a substitution effect, and address this question empirically using household survey data and two different regression techniques (a Difference-in-Differences estimator and an Instrumental Variable approach). We find that besides education, female employment has a significant negative effect on fertility rates. Reducing fertility rates is considered as a prerequisite for reaching the MDGs, and our finding implies that the horticultural export boom and associated employment may indirectly contribute to this.

Keywords: International Development; Labor and Human Capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:iaae15:212206

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.212206

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