Women's Schooling Research Articles

Are "Global Measures" of Psychological Intimate Partner Violence Against Women Really Comparable? A Measurement Invariance Analysis of Controlling Behaviors in 19 Low- and Middle- Income Countries.

Background One third of adult women report lifetime psychological intimate partner violence (IPV). Controlling behavior is a common dimension of psychological IPV; however, evidence is mixed on its cross-national and cross-time measurement invariance, limiting its use to monitor Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5.2.1, to eliminate all forms of violence against women. We explored easier-to-modify survey-design features and harder-to-modify individual-level and national-level characteristics that may account for non-invariance of these controlling-behavior items. Methods We analyzed data on five controlling behaviors administered to 373,167 ever-partnered women 15-49 years in 19 low- or middle-income countries in which at least two national Demographic and Health Surveys were administered during 2005-2019. We performed multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) to test for exact forms of invariance and alignment optimization (AO) to test for approximate invariance across 7-9 survey-design groups, defined by the number of preceding questionnaire modules (to proxy respondent burden) and weeks of interviewer training (to proxy interviewer skills). Adjustment for covariates in the MGCFA assessed whether individual- and national-level characteristics could account for any observed non-invariance across survey-design groups. Results In MGCFA without covariates, configural invariance of the controlling-behavior items was observed across survey-design groups. Exact invariance, partial invariance (with 20% of parameter estimates freed), and approximate invariance were not observed across groups. In adjusted MGCFA, neither woman-level covariates (schooling, attitudes about IPV against women) nor national-level covariates (women's mean schooling, mean attitudes about IPV against women, gender-related legal environment) alone or combined accounted for the non-invariance of controlling-behavior items across survey-design groups. Conclusions Comparing estimates for controlling behavior across country, time, and survey design variations warrants caution. Standardizing questionnaire length and interviewer training may improve the invariance of these items. Other characteristics, like ethnicity and language, may account for the non-invariance of controlling-behavior items across survey-design groups and should be tested. Current controlling-behavior items should be refined to enhance their comparability, and new controlling-behavior items should be identified and tested to improve the item set's content validity. Given current evidence of the high prevalence and health impacts of psychological IPV against women, advancing this research agenda is needed to monitor SDG 5.2.1.

Heterogeneous Effects of Women's Schooling on Fertility, Literacy and Work: Evidence from Burundi's Free Primary Education Policy

Abstract This article investigates the effect of women's schooling on fertility as well as on associated mechanisms by leveraging Burundi's free primary education policy (FPE) of 2005 as a natural experiment. Exogenous variation in schooling is identified through a fuzzy regression discontinuity design. Our results show that educational attainment was positively influenced by Burundi's FPE for women situated at all wealth levels. However, the relevant downstream effects of schooling—measured by fertility, literacy and work outcomes—reveal heterogenous treatment effects which are moderated by women's household wealth. While poor women profit in terms of increases in literacy (6.7 percentage-point increase for each year of policy-induced schooling), remunerated employment opportunities (5.7 percentage-point increase), as well as a reduction in desired and actual fertility outcomes (6.9 percentage-point reduction in teenage childbirth), none of these effects of additional education are observed for women from the wealthier households of our sample. The evidence of such a marked heterogeneity contributes to the growing literature examining the nexus between education and fertility in developing countries and helps to evaluate under which conditions the literature's findings may generalize.

Impact of the CARE Tipping Point Program in Nepal on adolescent girls’ agency and risk of child, early, or forced marriage: Results from a cluster-randomized controlled trial

BackgroundGirl child, early, and forced marriage (CEFM) persists in South Asia, with long-term effects on well-being. CARE's Tipping Point Initiative (TPI) sought to address the gender norms and inequalities underlying CEFM by engaging participant groups on programmatic topics and supporting community dialogue to build girls' agency, shift power relations, and change norms. We assessed impacts of the CARE TPI on girls' multifaceted agency and risk of CEFM in Nepal. MethodsThe quantitative evaluation was a three-arm, cluster-randomized controlled trial (control; Tipping Point Program [TPP]; Tipping Point Plus Program [TPP+] with emphasized social-norms change). Fifty-four clusters of ∼200 households each were selected from two districts (27:27) with probability proportional to size and randomized evenly to study arms. A pre-baseline census identified unmarried girls 12–16 years (1,242) and adults 25 years or older (540). Questionnaires covered marriage; agency; social networks/norms; and discrimination/violence. Baseline participation was 1,140 girls and 540 adults. Retention was 1,124 girls and 531 adults. Regression-based difference-in-difference models assessed program effects on 15 agency-related secondary outcomes. Cox-proportional hazard models assessed program effects on time to marriage. Sensitivity analyses assessed the robustness of findings. ResultsAt follow-up, marriage was rare for girls (<6.05%), and 10 secondary outcomes had increased. Except for sexual/reproductive health knowledge (coef.=.71, p=.036) and group membership (coef.=.48, p=.026) for TPP + versus control, adjusted difference-in-difference models showed no program effects on secondary outcomes. Results were mostly unmoderated by community mean: gender norms, household poverty, or women's schooling attainment. Cox proportional hazard models showed no program effect on time-to-marriage. Findings were robust. DiscussionNull findings of the Nepal TPI may be attributable to low CEFM rates at follow-up, poor socio-economic conditions, COVID-19-related disruptions, and concurrent programming in control areas. As COVID-19 abates, impacts of TPP/TPP + on girls’ agency and marriage, alone and with complementary programming, should be assessed. Trial registration numberNCT04015856.

Mass Education and Women's Autonomy: Evidence From Latin America.

Most low- and middle-income countries have implemented mass education reforms in the last few decades. Demographers and policymakers have posited that mass schooling would enhance women's autonomy and, therefore, accelerate population transformations in the Global South. However, gains in women's schooling may have unexpected implications for female autonomy in contexts where hypergamy norms-the ideal that men should marry down and women should marry up in education and other markers of status-are still dominant. This study addresses difficulties in evaluating the causal impact of additional education on women's autonomy by leveraging the timing of compulsory schooling reforms in three Latin American countries: Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru. Using Demographic and Health Surveys, I implement an instrumental variable design using random exposure to compulsory schooling laws as an instrument for years of education. Results show that for women who entered the school system as a result of compulsory reforms, further schooling decreased their level of autonomy in all countries-especially among women from rural Bolivia and Peru. Additional analyses suggest these results are explained by changes in the selection into schooling and the formation of unions defying hypergamy norms. Together, these findings highlight the importance of examining the returns to mass schooling considering population heterogeneity and the contextual meaning of women's education.

Effective investment in women's futures: Schooling with learning

Women's schooling has long been regarded as one of the best investments in development. Yet countries vary widely in the extent to which a year of schooling conveys useful skills and knowledge and hence schooling and education cannot be treated as synonyms. Using two different cross-nationally comparable data sets which contain measures of schooling, assessments of literacy, and life outcomes for more than 50 countries we show the association of women's education, defined as schooling and the acquisition of literacy, with four life outcomes (fertility, child mortality, empowerment, and financial practices) is much larger than the standard estimates of the gains from schooling alone. In our preferred instrumental variables (IV) estimates, that correct for the attenuation bias induced by measurement error, the gain from education is more than 3 times larger than the standard OLS estimates of gains from schooling alone. While our results are not causal estimates, if anything like our results are true in the causal pathways whereby schooling and learning lead to improvements in women's well-being this implies the estimates of the costs and benefits of expansions in grade attainment versus improving learning need to be adjusted accordingly.

The Relationship between Women's Education with Women's Labor Participation and National Income: A Research on G20 Countries.

The purpose of this research is to reveal the relationship between women’s education, women's labor force participation and national income in G20 countries. The relationships between women's education, women's labor force participation and national income were analyzed by the panel data analysis method for the G20 countries for the period 1997-2018. Stability of series were tested by Fisher ADF and Fisher PP panel root tests and the series were determined to be I (1). Pedroni (2004) was used to test the existence of cointegration relationships between the series. The series were found to be cointegrated. The long- and short-term relationships of the series were analyzed by the Panel DOLS method and it is determined that the increase of female schooling level increase the female labor force participation rate, increase of female schooling level and female labor force participation rate increase the per capita (real) national income. A two-way causality relationship was found between the ratio of women in higher education and national income per person. In addition, two-way causality relations between women's labor force participation rates and schooling rates at all levels of women were determined. In the study, it is concluded that in G20 countries, women's schooling rate increases the women's participation in the labor market and increases of women's schooling rate and female employment increase the national income per capita in countries. Article visualizations:

Women's schooling, fertility, and child health outcomes: Evidence from Uganda's free primary education program

This paper examines the role of women's education on both fertility and child health in Uganda. To identify causal effects, I exploit the timing of a national reform that eliminated primary school fees in 1997 to implement a regression discontinuity design. At the cutoff, the reform increased educational attainment by nearly one year on average, with impacts across all grade levels through the end of secondary school. Women with more schooling both delay and reduce overall fertility, increase early child health investments, and have less chronically malnourished children. In terms of mechanisms, women with additional schooling do not abstain more from sex as adolescents, but they are more likely to have used contraceptives before a first pregnancy and they delay marriage. Other downstream effects include improved employment outcomes and greater wealth.

Stillbirth rates in 20 countries of Latin America: an ecological study

To describe country-level stillbirth rates and their change over time in Latin America, and to measure the association of stillbirth rates with socio-economic and health coverage indicators in the region. Ecological study. 20 countries of Latin America. Aggregated data from pregnant women with countries as units of analysis. We used stillbirth estimates, and socio-economic and healthcare coverage indicators reported from 2006 to 2016 from UNICEF, United Nations Development Programme and World Bank datasets. We calculated Spearman's correlation coefficients between stillbirths rates and socioeconomic and health coverage indicators. National estimates of stillbirth rates in each country. The estimated stillbirth rate for Latin America for 2015 was 8.1 per 1000 births (range 3.1-24.9). Seven Latin America countries had rates higher than 10 stillbirths per 1000 births. The average annual reduction rate for the region was 2% (range 0.1-3.8%), with the majority of Latin America countries ranging between 1.5 and 2.5%. National stillbirth rates were correlated to: women's schooling (rS = -0.7910), gross domestic product per capita (rS = -0.8226), fertility rate (rS = 0.6055), urban population (rS = -0.6316), and deliveries at health facilities (rS = -0.6454). Country-level estimated stillbirth rates in Latin America varied widely in 2015. The trend and magnitude of reduction in stillbirth rates between 2000 and 2015 was similar to the world average. Socio-economic and health coverage indicators were correlated to stillbirth rates in Latin America. Stillbirth rates decreased in Latin America but remain relatively high, with wide variations among countries.

Does Increasing Women's Education Reduce Their Risk of Intimate Partner Violence? Evidence from an Education Policy Reform.

Although scholars have employed rigorous causal methods to examine the relationship between education and crime, few studies have taken a causal approach to the study of education and intimate partner violence (IPV) specifically. From a social causation perspective, improving women's education should protect them from violence, yet from a social selection perspective, education could proxy for unobserved factors that explain negative associations between education and IPV. This study adjudicates between the two possibilities using an exogenous source of variation in education-a 1990s compulsory schooling reform in Peru. Specifically, the author conducts an instrumented regression discontinuity that implicitly controls for women's unobserved endowments by comparing women who were aged just above (N=8,195) and below (N=6,645) the school-age cutoff at the time of the reform. Consistent with the social causation perspective, increasing women's schooling reduced both their recent and longer-term probabilities of psychological, physical, and sexual IPV, and their recent and longer-term probabilities of experiencing any IPV and poly-victimization. Supplemental mediation analyses provide support for three interrelated causal pathways-improvements in women's personal resources, delayed family formation, and changes in partner selection. These findings confirm the protective effects of women's education and further illuminate mechanistic processes by which this occurs.

For Better or for Worse?: Education and the Prevalence of Domestic Violence in Turkey

We exploit a change in the compulsory schooling law in Turkey to estimate the causal effects of education on the prevalence of domestic violence. By adopting a regression discontinuity design, we find that the reform increased women's schooling by one year to one-anda-half years and improved their labor market outcomes, with particularly strong effects for women raised in rural areas. The increase in education among rural women led to an increase in self-reported psychological violence and financial control behavior, without changes in physical violence, partner characteristics, or women's attitudes towards such violence. (JEL I21, I28, J12, J16, J24, O15, O18)

Double Take: The Effect of Sibling Sex Composition on Women's Schooling, Earnings, and Labor Supply

Understanding the role of the family in the production of human capital is a salient question in economics. Using a twin research design that exploits exogenous gender variation in dizygotic twins, this paper credibly identifies the effect of sibling sex composition on schooling, earnings, and labor supply. Women born with a male co-twin have higher earnings, schooling, and labor force participation than women born with a female co-twin. Men born with a female co-twin, on the other hand, have outcomes that are statistically indistinguishable from zero. Family attributes provide a limited explanation of the sex composition effect.

On the impact of early marriage on schooling outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa and South West Asia

This paper examines the effect of age of marriage on women's schooling outcomes for 36 countries from Sub-Saharan Africa and South West Asia. We employ an instrumental variable approach to account for the endogeneity of early marriage driven by socio-economic and cultural factors. Our results show that delaying early marriage by one year is associated with an increase of half a year of education in Sub-Saharan Africa and nearly one third of a year of education in South West Asia as well as a lower likelihood of dropping out from secondary school of 5.5% in South West Asia.

Brothers are Better: The Effect of Sibling Sex Composition on Women's Schooling, Health, Earnings, and Labor Supply

Using a twin research design that exploits exogenous gender variation in dizygotic twins, this paper credibly identifies the effect of sibling sex composition on schooling, earnings, health, and labor supply. Women born with a male co-twin have higher earnings, schooling, labor force participation, and better health than women born with a female co-twin. Men born with a female co-twin, on the other hand, have higher rates of ever smoking but differences on all other outcomes are statistically indistinguishable from zero. Family characteristics provide a limited explanation of the sibling sex composition effect.

Women's decision-making autonomy and children's schooling in rural Mozambique.

Women's decision-making autonomy in developing settings has been shown to improve child survival and health outcomes. However, little research has addressed possible connections between women's autonomy and children's schooling. To examine the relationship between rural women's decision-making autonomy and enrollment status of primary school-age children living in their households and how this relationship differs by child's gender. The analysis uses data from a 2009 survey of rural households in four districts of Gaza province in southern Mozambique. Multilevel logistic models predict the probability of being in school for children between 6 and 14 years old. The results show a positive association of women's decision-making autonomy with the probability of being enrolled in primary school for daughters, but not for sons. The effect of women's autonomy is net of other women's characteristics typically associated with enrollment and does not mediate the effects of those characteristics. Based on the results, we argue that women with higher levels of decision-making autonomy may have a stronger preference for daughters' schooling and may have a greater say in making and implementing decisions regarding daughters' education, compared to women with lower autonomy levels. Results also illustrate a need for considering a broader set of autonomy-related characteristics when examining the effects of women's status on children's educational outcomes.

Women's schooling and fertility under low female labor force participation: Evidence from mobility restrictions in Israel

This paper studies the effect of mothers' education on fertility in a mostly Muslim population with very low female labor force participation. We first show that a removal of travel restrictions on Israeli Arabs had raised female education and had almost no effect on male education. Next, we show that it lowered fertility rates among exposed women, which we interpret as an effect of female education on fertility. We rule out labor-force participation, age at marriage, marriage and divorce rates and spousal labor-force participation and earnings as confounding factors or as mechanisms but find that spousal education and children quality play a role in the fertility decline. We provide a variety of robustness tests that rule out other channels by which the removal of the travel restrictions could have affected fertility directly. These results are particularly interesting and important for the context of many Muslim countries with low rates of female labor force participation.

Dating, Sex, and Schooling in Urban Kenya

Completion of secondary school is increasingly viewed as a desirable life goal for young men and women in urban Kenya. Yet achieving this goal often conflicts with other key transitions to adulthood, such as becoming sexually active, marrying, having children, and finding employment. Drawing upon exceptionally rich life-history calendar data from young people in Kisumu, Kenya, we explore how the timing and sequencing of key transitions affects the likelihood of secondary school completion. Conversely, we also examine how school enrollment and performance affect the timing of sexual initiation. Our findings indicate that sexual activity and the transition toward family formation are largely incompatible with young women's schooling. For men, however, romantic and sexual partnerships have no impact on schooling unless a partner becomes pregnant. Instead, paid employment appears to be least compatible with continued education. (STUDIES IN FAMILY PLANNING

Decomposing Fertility Differences Across World Regions and Over Time: Is Improved Health More Important than Women's Schooling?

There is a recent renewal of interest in the relation between shifts in age structures of populations and various economic outcomes. These shifts are triggered by changes in fertility and mortality that take place some years before becoming apparent in the standard age structure and that may create windows of opportunity for subsequent development. A large number of countries in the world are still experiencing, or probably about to experience, fertility declines. This paper first characterizes differences in fertility and mortality and in related dependency ratios across regions and over time. The paper then uses a panel of 96 countries covering the period 1965-1995 to decompose the differences in fertility rates between developed and developing countries and the differences in fertility between 1960 and 1995 for several developing regions and for 22 individual countries in the Latin American and Caribbean region. These decompositions indicate that the main correlates of fertility differences across space and over time are female schooling and health, with the former having larger associations with differential fertility among regions/countries at a point of time and the latter having larger associations with fertility declines over time. This suggests that the importance of associations of increased female schooling relative to those of improved health may be overstated in the literature, which is substantially based on inferring longitudinal relations from cross-sectional data.

Gênero, geração e classe: uma discussão sobre as mulheres das camadas médias e populares do Rio de Janeiro

Este artigo apresenta a comparação dos dados de duas pesquisas realizadas com o objetivo de verificar as continuidades e descontinuidades nas representações de gênero em diferentes gerações de famílias das camadas médias e populares do estado do Rio de Janeiro: das avós, das mães e das suas filhas. Privilegiamos aqui as percepções do lugar social da mulher no contexto das transformações em curso na sociedade brasileira. Considerando o crescimento da participação feminina no mercado de trabalho e o aumento no nível de escolaridade das mulheres, interessa-nos, particularmente, conhecer as representações e as práticas das integrantes dessas três gerações em torno da família, da religião e da profissionalização feminina.

Factors Influencing Child Health at the Periphery of the Kumasi Metropolis, Ghana

The paper examined some of the factors that influence child health at peripheral settlements of the Kumasi Metropolis in Ghana. The simple random technique, supported by purposive procedure, was used to select 240 women whose children were above 2 years but less than 5. Formal interview was the main data collection instrument, whilst linear regression, alongside crosstabulation, was the main analytical tool. Results showed that the principal determinants of child health, in the metropolis were mother's education, household income and exclusive breastfeeding (nutrition). Besides, the use of insecticide bed-nets has been established as having a positive impact on child health. Among the recommendations to improve child health in the locality are the adoption of an integrated approach by appropriate government Ministries and institutions to lift women from the buck of ignorance and poverty through the functional literacy and income generation programmes, whilst steps should be taken to ensure effective formal education of the girl-child. It is recommended that a survey on the impact of childhood immunisation on child health, using a larger sample size, be carried out. A schematic model of the determinants of child health has emerged. This survey has an additional merit of deviating from the normal bivariate and purely descriptive approaches to the use of the multivariate model which evaluates the impact of independent variables. Keywords : child health, urban periphery, women's schooling, exclusive breastfeeding Journal of Science and Technology Vol. 28 (1) 2008 pp. 35-48

Women's Schooling and Other Ecocultural Shifts: A Longitudinal Study of Historical Change Among the Zinacantec Maya

Women's schooling has been lauded as having a large, important impact on child socialization. Although there may be positive effects of schooling, there may also be effects from concomitant cultural changes that come with modernization. In this article we examine the findings that changes in textile production among the Zinacantec Maya over the past several decades have been coordinated with several cultural changes, including increased schooling for women, involvement in a growing commercial economy, and television. Understanding these various changes leads to a more nuanced picture of the effects of cultural change on women's activities. Our findings indicate that research on globalization and social change should consider multiple possible effects on cultural practices.