Education and Fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa: Individual and Community Effects

Abstract

Using data from Demographic and Health Surveys for 22 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, I show that the average educational level in a village or a community of a similar size has a significant depressing effect on a woman 's birth rates, net of urbanization and her own education. According to simulations, average fertility for these countries would be 1.00 lower if were expanded from the current level in the region to the relatively high level in Kenya. The exclusion of aggregate from the model leaves a response of only 0.52. A considerable aggregate contribution is estimated even when several potential determinants of are included. This finding illustrates the need to consider aggregate in future assessments of the total impact of education. Although has been one of the most thoroughly studied determinants of fertility, with the perspective now often extended to include the closely related topic women's position, important questions are still poorly answered. One of these questions is whether the educational level of people in a neighborhood or a larger surrounding area has an effect on a woman's fertility above and beyond that of her own education. For example, do uneducated women who live in communities where the average educational level is high have a lower fertility than uneducated women elsewhere? This is an important question to answer because if aggregate has such an effect, fertility will decline more steeply in response to an increase in than is suggested by a model that includes only individual-level effects. Caldwell (1980) discussed the possible importance of mass education more than 20 years ago, and the mechanisms he addressed can be classified largely as aggregate-level effects. In the two decades that have elapsed, however, little empirical research has been devoted to this issue. It would be particularly valuable to gain more knowledge about the impact of schooling in sub-Saharan Africa, where many countries still display a total fertility above six, some of them without a sign of decline (e.g., Kirk and Pillet 1998). Parents may suffer from having many children, and growing up with many siblings may be detrimental to the children's well-being. In addition, large families may contribute to burdens on other families because of the possibly harmful societal effects of population growth (for a discussion of such micro- and macro-mechanisms, see, for example, Ahlburg, Kelley, and Mason 1996; Cassen 1994; Kravdal 2001 a). A reduction of fertility therefore is widely considered to be an important goal, and it would be helpful to know whether investments in are an even more promising pathway than has usually been believed (in addition to being beneficial for other reasons). There is plenty of room for improvement in the region because the average level of is still low.