The effect of female education on marital fertility in different size communities of Mexico.

Abstract

Based on a very large sample of married women aged 15 to 49 from the 1970 census of Mexico, the effect of literacy and education on the number of children ever born in different size communities is investigated. While cumulative marital fertility tends to be inversely related to community size, the overall shape of the education-fertility relationship is generally similar in rural, semi-urban, small urban, and large urban localities. These results combined with those for literacy do not support the hypothesis of an urbanization or a literacy threshold at which women's schooling begins to reduce family size. Literate wives have slightly more children than illiterate wives in rural areas, but in more urbanized regions this differential inverses and seems to widen with each increase in size of the community. Fertility is slightly higher at 1 to 3 years of primary school than at no education; it declines slightly at 4 to 5 years primary, and then declines substantially at complete primary, secondary, and preparatory/university levels. A statistically significant but small interaction between education and residence on cumulative marital fertility is noted. The overall greater impact of female education on cumulative marital fertility in urban as compared to semi-urban as compared to rural communities of Mexico is primarily due to the proportion of married women with fertility depressing educational backgrounds rather than to a markedly different effect of education, per se, on fertility. The results emphasize the country-wide importance of completion of the entire 6-year primary cycle.