Women's Educational Attainment Research Articles

ENDURING ECONOMIC HARDSHIP, WOMEN'S EDUCATION, MARRIAGE AND FERTILITY TRANSITION IN KINSHASA

This paper examines fertility transition in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and second-largest city in sub-Saharan Africa. Shapiro (1996) documented the onset of fertility transition in the city, using data from 1990. Women's education was strongly inversely related to fertility, beginning with secondary schooling, and increases in women's education were important in initiating fertility transition in the city. The paper uses data from the 2007 Demographic and Health Survey in the DRC to examine fertility in Kinshasa and assess fertility transition since 1990, a period characterized by severe adverse economic conditions in the DRC. Fertility transition has continued at a strong pace. In part this reflects increased educational attainment of women, but it appears also to be largely a consequence of enduring economic hardship. The ongoing fertility decline has been accompanied by substantial delays in entry to marriage and childbearing, reflecting adverse economic conditions, which in turn have contributed to continuing declines in fertility.

Moving On? A Growth-Curve Analysis of Occupational Attainment and Career Progression Patterns in West Germany

In this paper, we use multilevel growth-curve analysis to model occupational stratification across West German careers for cohorts born between 1919 and 1971. We argue that a life-course approach gives a more appropriate perspective into social stratification by focusing on the permanence of inequalities across human lives. With data from the German Life History Study (GLHS), our primary interest is in the amount and timing of career progression and the ways in which educational attainment, class background, and cohort context shape them. We confirm previous findings of limited career progression and permanence in occupational inequality. Thus, career mobility can correct for initial disadvantages only to a limited degree. We also confirm the strong role played by the standardized and stratified German educational system, which channels workers into specific occupations with strict boundaries. We find a substantial gross effect of class background, which is strongly mediated by educational attainment for women but not for men. We do not find any general indications of a trend in change across cohorts, although there are some weak indications that men who entered the labor market in the problematic 1970s had weaker career growth. We conclude by discussing the advantages of a life-course approach to occupational stratification and the possibilities of growth-curve analysis to answer pertinent questions in research on careers and occupational mobility.

Assessment of the gender gap in Sudan

This paper examines the gender gap in education and investigates the related implications on the labour market and returns to education in Sudan. Our results confirm two stylized facts: first, the incidence of significant gender gap in education in Sudan and second, the incidence of gender inequalities and gap in skill level, share of women in economic activities, labour force participation rate, employment and returns to education can be interpreted in relation to the incidence of gender gap in education. We fill the gap in the Sudanese literature by addressing the gender gap in education and related implications in labour market and returns to education, since these issues are not adequately discussed in the Sudanese literature. A novel element in our analysis is that we use new primary survey data at the micro level to show the gap and differences in returns to education and correlation between wage and education, experience and its square defined by gender in Sudan. Our findings at the micro level imply that the slight gender gap or difference in the rate of return to education in favour of women is only 0.2 which is not very noticeable. These findings indicate the importance of enhancing educational attainment for women to facilitate improvement of return to education for women. We find that in general women are likely to be more unemployed than men. The major policy implications and recommendations from our analysis are that Sudan needs to reduce the gender gap in education and related implication in the labour market. By investing large amounts of resources in increasing women's educational attainment, improving economic participation, increasing employment opportunities and improving equal and fair returns to education for Sudanese women to better integrate Sudanese women into the economy to reap the benefits of investment in empowerment of women.

Fertility Transition in Sub-Saharan Africa: Falling and Stalling

This paper uses data from the Demographic and Health Surveys to examine the current status of fertility transition in sub-Saharan Africa, including the extent to which fertility decline has stalled. Among the two dozen countries covered by multiple surveys, 22 have initiated fertility transition, and a third of these countries have experienced stalling of fertility decline. We study the links between changes in contraceptive use, fertility preferences, and socioeconomic development (as reflected in changes in women's education, infant and child mortality, and real per-capita economic growth) and fertility decline and stalling. Changes in the measures of socioeconomic development are all related to the likelihood of stalling. We also analyze determinants of age-specific fertility rates in urban and rural places, and assess future prospects for fertility decline in the region. Progress in increasing women's educational attainment and in reducing infant and child mortality are identified as key factors contributing to sustained fertility decline.

State Ideology and Female School Enrollment in Iran

There are two forces that drive attitudes and behaviors in Iran. Strong Islamic, religious traditions that continue to dominate the culture exist in the presence of an emerging pattern of developmental idealism. This idealism, seen first in western societies, is associated with beliefs about and a striving toward such modern attributes as individualism, autonomy of children, nuclear families, equality between women and men, and planned family formation. It is thought that diffusion of this idealism occurs over time and cannot be fully controlled by traditional institutions and conservative governments. Because religious traditions in Iran have been most defined and restricted for females, we reasoned that an important and strong indicator of evidence of diffusion would be increases in female school enrollment. To explore these changes, we examined public record data for the period between 1976 and 2006. The data demonstrated clear advancements in education for women. The strong educational attainment of women during the period of study is parallel to findings in other areas, particularly in the realms of increase in age of marriage, control over reproductive behaviors including birth timing and family size, and are thus supportive of a strong trend toward developmental idealism [1 - 9]. This trend was facilitated by extensive expansion of access to educational institutions by the government.

Socioeconomic status as a risk factor for dementia death: individual participant meta-analysis of 86 508 men and women from the UK

Life-course socioeconomic factors may have a role in dementia aetiology but there is a current paucity of studies. Meta-analyses of individual participant data would considerably strengthen this evidence base. To examine the association between socioeconomic status in early life and adulthood with later dementia death. Individual participant meta-analysis of 11 prospective cohort studies (1994-2004, n = 86 508). Leaving full-time education at an earlier age was associated with an increased risk of dementia death in women (fully adjusted hazard ratio (HR) for age ≤14 v. age ≥16: HR = 1.76, 95% CI 1.23-2.53) but not men. Occupational social class was not statistically significantly associated with dementia death in men or women. Lower educational attainment in women was associated with an increased risk of dementia-related death independently of common risk behaviours and comorbidities.

Internet Pornography Exposure and Women's Attitude Towards Extramarital Sex: An Exploratory Study

Pornography research has primarily focused on male sexuality. This exploratory study assessed the association between adult U.S. women's exposure to Internet pornography and attitude towards extramarital sex using data provided by the General Social Survey (GSS). The glamorization of uncommitted, recreational sex in general and extramarital sex in particular is common in pornography. A positive association between Internet pornography viewing and more positive extramarital sex attitudes was found. In alignment with Wright's (2011a) 3AM model of media sexual socialization, this association was moderated by women's media confidence, religiosity, and educational attainment. Specifically, Internet pornography exposure was associated with more positive attitudes toward extramarital sex only for women who had more media confidence, were less religious and were less educated.

An Assessment of Gender Discrimination in Household Expenditure on Education in India

Gender discrimination in household expenditure on education has led to unsatisfactory progress in educational attainment for women in many countries across the world. It has been observed that households across different states in rural and urban India prefer to incur more expenditure on education for male members than for females. Kingdon (2005) [Where has all the bias gone? Detecting gender bias in the intra-household allocation of educational expenditure, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 53(2), 409–452] has observed significant gender bias in household educational expenditure in a number of Indian states utilizing the household survey data of the National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi. Other researchers, such as Chaudhuri & Roy (2006) [Do parents spread educational expenditure evenly across the two genders? Evidence from two North Indian states, Economic and Political Weekly, 41, pp. 5276–5282] and Lancaster et al. (2008) [Household expenditure patterns and gender bias: evidence from selected Indian states, Oxford Development Studies, 36(2), 133–157], have also confirmed the presence of significant gender bias in the expenses incurred on education by households in India. However, few of these studies are based on the analysis of sufficiently large, contemporary datasets, and hence they are unable to provide a picture of gender discrimination at the disaggregated level, i.e. at the state level. Since there is wide variation in social, cultural, anthropometrical, economic and many other factors among Indian states, it is important to analyse gender disparity in India at the level of the state. Here, utilizing individual-level data on educational expenditure from the 64th round of the National Sample Survey, an attempt is made to assess the current scenario in gender inequality in household educational expenditure in India at both the national and state level. It is observed that significant gender disparity exists in intra-household educational expenses and that this discrimination is not confined to the “backward” or developing states in India.

Marriage (Still) Matters: The Contribution of Demographic Change to Trends in Childlessness in the United States

Childlessness in the United States nearly doubled between 1980 and 2000. Other dramatic changes in the U.S. population also took place over this period-notably, women's average educational attainment increased, and the proportion marrying declined-but the impact of these changes on childlessness has not been formally examined. In this article, I use data from the Current Population Survey Fertility Supplements (1995, 1998, 2004, 2008) and logistic regression and regression-based decomposition techniques to assess the contribution of changes in educational attainment, marriage behavior, and racial/ethnic composition on population levels of childlessness in the United States. Results show that increases in the proportion of women unmarried by age 40 contributed most to the increase in childlessness in the late twentieth century, although these increases were offset somewhat by increased childbearing among unmarried women. The rising proportion of women with a college degree also explained a substantial amount of the increase in childless women.

HOW DOES THE SPREAD OF PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOLING INFLUENCE THE FERTILITY TRANSITION? EVIDENCE FROM RURAL NEPAL

From 1996 to 2006, Nepal experienced a substantial fertility decline, with the total fertility rate dropping from 4.6 to 3.1 births per woman. This study examines the associations between progress towards universal primary and secondary schooling and fertility decline in rural Nepal. Several hypotheses regarding mechanisms through which education affects current fertility behaviour are tested, including: the school environment during women's childhood; current availability of schools; knowledge of educational costs; and women's own educational attainment. Data for the analysis come from the 2003-04 Nepal Living Standards Survey, a nationally representative random sample of households, which includes detailed data on fertility, household expenditure, educational attainment, demographic characteristics and the use of social services. Census and administrative data are also used to construct district-level gross enrolment ratios for primary and secondary schools during the women's childhood. Discrete dependent variable modelling techniques are used to estimate the effects of the following variables on the probability of women giving birth in a given year: district-level gross enrolment ratios for primary and secondary schools during women's childhood; having had a child previously in school; women's own educational level; current school availability; and other covariates. Separate models are estimated for the overall sample of rural women of reproductive age, and for parity-specific sub-samples. The results suggest that district-level gross enrolment ratios for secondary schools and, in some instances, having had a previous child enrolled in school are significant determinants of fertility in rural areas. These results are highly independent of women's own educational levels. Overall, the results suggest that, in the rural Nepal context, mass schooling influences the fertility transition through both community- and household-level pathways.

Marital adjustment of working class and non-working class women in Port Harcourt metropolis, Nigeria

This paper examines the marital adjustment of working class and non-working class women in Port Harcourt metropolis in Rivers State, Nigeria. The survey research design was used for the study. The sample consisted of three hundred (300) subjects selected through multi-stage random sampling procedure from four selected suburbs- Oroworokwo, Rebisi, Ogbunabali, and Orogbum in the Port Harcourt metropolis. Data was collected using the Marital Adjustment Questionnaire that was constructed by the researchers. Independent t-test statistics was used to test the first and second hypotheses while analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test the third hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance. Results showed that both working class and non-working class women exhibit no clear difference in their marital adjustment. The educational attainment of women does not affect their marital adjustment. Women who are of low income status exhibit the same degree of marital adjustment as those of high income status. The implications of the findings are discussed. Key words: Nigeria, working class women, marital adjustment, educational attainment.

Trends in Gender-based Health Inequality in a Transitional Society: A Historical Analysis of South Korea

ObjectivesThis study examined the trends in gender disparity in the self-rated health of people aged 25 to 64 in South Korea, a rapidly changing society, with specific attention to socio-structural inequality.MethodsRepresentative sample data were obtained from six successive, nationwide Social Statistics Surveys of the Korean National Statistical Office performed during 1992 to 2010.ResultsThe results showed a convergent trend in poor self-rated health between genders since 1992, with a sharper decline in gender disparity observed in younger adults (aged 25 to 44) than in older adults (aged 45 to 64). The diminishing gender gap seemed to be attributable to an increase in women's educational attainment levels and to their higher status in the labor market.ConclusionsThe study indicated the importance of equitable social opportunities for both genders for understanding the historical trends in the gender gap in the self-reported health data from South Korea.

Brides for Sale: Cross-Border Marriages and Female Immigration

Every year, a large number of women immigrate as brides from developing countries to developed countries in East Asia. This phenomenon virtually did not exist in the early 1990s, but foreign brides currently comprise 4 to 35 percent of newlyweds in these developed Asian countries. This paper argues that two factors account for this rapid increase in bride importation: the rapid growth of women's educational attainment and a cultural norm that leads to a low net surplus of marriage for educated women. We provide empirical evidence supporting our theoretical model and its implications, using datasets from Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan.

Is It Ideology or Desperation: Why Do Organizations Deploy Women in Violent Terrorist Attacks?

Why do some terrorist organizations deploy women on the front lines and in violent attacks? This study explores the social conditions, economic factors, and organizational characteristics that might explain women's participation in violent terrorist activity. With a new data set of 395 terrorist organizations, women's participation in terrorist attacks was quantified and coded. The logistic regression analysis results suggest that women's educational attainment, social rights, terrorist organization's age and size, and the level of a country's economic development are important predictors of the deployment of women in terrorist violence while a terrorist group's ideological or religious orientation and the level of democracy do not significantly influence the likelihood of women's participation.

Resource constraints and educational attainment in developing countries: Colombia 1945–2005

In this paper, I investigate the extent to which secondary and higher education supply constraints affected aggregate educational attainment in Colombia for cohorts born between 1945 and 1981. As was the case in many other countries after World War II, in Colombia, industrialization, urbanization and rapid population growth increased the demand for education and the return to schooling. Although educational expenditures from the central government and the states increased after the 1950s, secondary and tertiary schools' per-pupil inputs declined. Using variation in cohort size within states and over time to proxy for changes in education demand, I find that for cohorts born after 1945, a 10% increase in cohort size reduced high school completion rate by 3%, the college completion rate by 4% and average years of schooling by 1%. Compared to women's educational attainment rates, changes in cohort size had greater negative effects on men's rates.

P1-179 The Southampton women's survey: from epidemiology to policy

IntroductionEpidemiological studies inform understanding of influences on health. Findings can lead directly to policy changes, but such changes need assessing, using formal intervention studies.MethodsThe Southampton Women's Survey is a longitudinal...

Assessment of the Gender Gap in Sudan

This paper examines the gender gap in education and investigates the related implications on the labour market and returns to education in Sudan. Our results confirm two stylized facts: first, the incidence of significant gender gap in education in Sudan and second, the incidence of gender inequalities and gap in skill level, share of women in economic activities, labour force participation rate, employment and returns to education can be interpreted in relation to the incidence of gender gap in education. We fill the gap in the Sudanese literature by addressing the gender gap in education and related implications in labour market and returns to education, since these issues are not adequately discussed in the Sudanese literature. A novel element in our analysis is that we use new primary survey data at the micro level to show the gap and differences in returns to education and correlation between wage and education, experience and its square defined by gender in Sudan. Our findings at the micro level imply that the slight gender gap or difference in the rate of return to education in favour of women is only 0.2 which is not very noticeable. These findings indicate the importance of enhancing educational attainment for women to facilitate improvement of return to education for women. We find that in general women are likely to be more unemployed than men. The major policy implications and recommendations from our analysis are that Sudan needs to reduce the gender gap in education and related implication in the labour market. By investing large amounts of resources in increasing women's educational attainment, improving economic participation, increasing employment opportunities and improving equal and fair returns to education for Sudanese women to better integrate Sudanese women into the economy to reap the benefits of investment in empowerment of women.

Does a woman’s educational attainment influence in vitro fertilization outcomes?

The association between educational level and cycle outcomes was quantified by applying multivariable logistic and linear regression within a prospective cohort of 2,569 women commencing their first in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycle. Although a woman's educational attainment was not associated with the likelihood of implantation failure, chemical pregnancy, spontaneous abortion, or live birth, the odds of cycle cancellation before egg retrieval were 40% lower among those with an college degree and 48% lower among those with graduate school attendance compared with women who had no college degree, suggesting that educational attainment is inversely associated with the likelihood of cycle cancellation.

SOCIO-ECONOMIC DETERMINANTS OF AGE AT FIRST MARRIAGE OF THE ETHNIC TRIBAL WOMEN IN BANGLADESH

This paper examines the socio-economic determinants of age at first marriage of the ethnic tribal women of Bangladesh. Cox proportional hazard regression analysis was applied to the data set containing 792 observations from four different tribal communities compiled on the basis of a household survey. The singulate mean age at marriage (SMAM) of the women, and mean age at first marriage for females, were found to be 21.8 years and 18.9 years, respectively, which were much higher than those at the national level. Findings revealed that woman's educational attainment and pre-marital work status significantly delayed the timing of marriage. Parents’ economic status and respondents’ birth order had the most significant effect on marital timing. The multivariate statistical analyses also identified several variables as important determinants of marriage timing for the tribal women, including ethnic identity, childhood place of residence, father's literacy and father's survival status. The findings of the study may provide a clue to the rising age at first marriage of the disadvantaged indigenous women.

Intergenerational transmission of women’s educational attainment in South Korea

Abstract Using a multi-group population projection model, this study examines implications of educational mobility and differential demographic rates on changing women's educational distribution in South Korea. This article focuses on implications of a differential population renewal process on educational mobility, which has not been extensively examined in previous studies of social mobility. My findings suggest, first, that differential demographic rates have no substantial influence on educational distribution, because of substantial educational mobility. Second, that intergenerational association and structural change matter in long run, with stronger intergenerational association and more structural change leading to increases in women's level of education. Finally, that educational mobility and differential fertility are interdependent processes that jointly influence differential population replacement, but fertility gap between education groups would have to be unreasonably large to be influential, due to extraordinarily high educational mobility in South Korea. (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.) 1. Introduction: Demography and social mobility This study examines intergenerational transmission of women's educational attainment in South Korea as a process jointly determined by educational mobility, differential fertility, and differential mortality. Most previous studies on social mobility have focused on intergenerational association in socioeconomic outcomes (e.g., education and occupation) based on existing parent-offspring dyads. Departing from this approach, this study examines implications of differential demographic rates, intergenerational association, and structural change between generations for transmission of socioeconomic status across generations as a whole. First, approach in most previous research has not fully examined how differential reproductive behaviors affect social mobility. Research in social mobility has applied a variety of statistical models, such as path analysis and structural equation models for status attainment process (Blau and Duncan 1967; Hauser, Tsai, and Sewell 1983), log-linear models for intergenerational occupational mobility (Erikson and Goldthorpe 1992; Hout 1984, 1988), and schooling progression-ratio models for educational attainment (Mare 1981; Shavit and Blossfeld 1993). All these models aim at estimating net intergenerational association in socioeconomic outcomes after controlling for potential confounders and change in marginal distributions. Although this approach demonstrates how offspring's socioeconomic outcomes depend on parental socioeconomic status, implications of socioeconomic differentials in demographic behaviors for status transmission have not been widely studied. This is unfortunate, because intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status is intrinsically the process by which a socioeconomically differentiated population reproduces itself (Mare 1997: 265). Such recognition is not new - demographic models for social mobility were developed as early as 1950s. Prais (1955) adopted a stable population theory to study social mobility, showing that occupational distributions approach a stable-equivalent state independent of initial state when mobility rates remain constant over time. Although Prais recognized possible complications due to demographic processes, his model did not take into account differential fertility and mortality (Prais 1955: 80). Matras published a series of papers that incorporated differential demographic processes into social mobility. He applied Prais's model (1955) using empirical data (Matras 1960), incorporated differential fertility by occupation (Matras 1961), and examined effect of fertility timing on population distribution in later periods (Matras 1967). These studies applied a multi-group population projection that assumes constant mobility and differential reproduction rates over a long period of time. …