Female Jobs and Fertility: Long-term Experimental Evidence from Ethiopian Factories

Andreas Kotsadam, Janneke Pieters, Pauline Rossi, Espen Villanger, Celine Zipfel and Tigabu Getahun

No 22030, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We conducted an experiment with multiple factories in Ethiopia to test the widespread hypothesis that formal employment among women reduces fertility. Tracking respondents over eight years, we find that women who were randomly offered a job had more children than the control group. The effect on fertility emerged once the effect on wage employment faded away, around three years after baseline. There are clear effects on household income and savings, but not on bargaining power or marriage. These patterns are consistent with a Beckerian model in which the income effect dominates the substitution effect and households are credit constrained.

Keywords: Female employment; Fertility; Industrialization; Sub-saharan africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J13 J16 J22 O15 O55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-10
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