Women’s access to school, educational attainment, and fertility: Evidence from Jordan

Abstract

In socially conservative Muslim societies, the absence of a sex-appropriate school in one’s community has historically been a major constraint to girls’ schooling. We use the expansion of access to girls’ or mixed schools in Jordan to investigate the effects of access to school on women’s education and fertility. We find that having access to a sex-appropriate school in a woman’s sub-district of birth led to 3.0–3.4 additional years of schooling and 1.0–1.4 fewer births. Using access to girl-appropriate schools as an instrument for female educational attainment, we find that an additional year of schooling reduces total fertility by 0.3–0.4 births. The impact of schooling on fertility is mostly for births occurring at older ages (30+) and higher parities (6+). We also find evidence of effects on intergenerational transmission of education but we find no evidence that school access has translated into higher participation in the labor market.