Free Primary Education, Fertility, and Women's Access to the Labor Market: Evidence from Ethiopia

Luke Chicoine

No 9105, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Educational Sciences; Health Care Services Industry; Primary Education; Economics of Education; Education Finance; Rural Labor Markets; Labor Markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-01-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dev and nep-hea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Journal Article: Free Primary Education, Fertility, and Women’s Access to the Labor Market: Evidence from Ethiopia (2021)
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