How Female Education Reduces Fertility: Models and Needed Research

Abstract

Although the correlation between female education and fertility has been documented, the operators that link greater female education to lower fertility at either the individual or aggregate levels have not been specified or submitted to systematic empirical tests. Discovering which aspects of female education account for reduced fertility requires a refined conceptualization of the education-fertility relationship as well as identification of all the causal variables and operators that mediate the effects of female education. A series of propositions from the research literature regarding indirect effects of female education on fertility through effects on age at marriage or first conception, labor force participation, social mobility, economic utility of children, exposure to mass media, knowledge and use of contraception, husband-wife communication, and infant mortality are set forth along with their rationale and empirical support. These propositions are supplemented by 1 on the direct effects and 3 on the interaction effects of female education on fertility. A block-recursive model is presented by means of which the 12 propositions can be brought together and assessed. A methodology for applying appropriate statistical procedures to World Fertility Survey or other high quality data arranged in the form of multivariate models in order to decompose the direct, indirect and joint effects of female education is then proposed and discussed.