Further evidence of community education effects on fertility in sub-Saharan Africa

Variation in wealth and educational drivers of fertility decline across 45 countries

“…While seemingly counter-intuitive, this effect is well known in subSaharan Africa (Caldwell and Caldwell 1987;Bledsoe et al 1994;Mace and Colleran 2009;Alvergne et al 2013), where those women who adopt contraceptives are regularly the ones who already have many children and want to space or limit future births and where cultures of high fertility remain strong (Caldwell and Caldwell 1987;Bledsoe et al 1994;Mbacké 2017). Community-level birth rates likely provide social information about reproductive decisions, and people may adopt the reproductive strategies of others living in their community, as we and others have previously found at lower levels of aggregation (Kravdal 2012;Colleran et al 2014). Since community level data capture the local social and economic environments that characterise women's daily lives, the characteristics of neighbours and friends may have a larger effect on fertility decline than the same characteristics at higher levels of aggregation (Kravdal 2012).…”

“…Community-level birth rates likely provide social information about reproductive decisions, and people may adopt the reproductive strategies of others living in their community, as we and others have previously found at lower levels of aggregation (Kravdal 2012;Colleran et al 2014). Since community level data capture the local social and economic environments that characterise women's daily lives, the characteristics of neighbours and friends may have a larger effect on fertility decline than the same characteristics at higher levels of aggregation (Kravdal 2012). There may also be some selection effect here, as women with more education or household wealth are probably less likely to live in high fertility areas.…”

“…This is because the number and types of such structuring properties vary substantially by country and allowing the slopes of wealth and education to vary within each of these structures would currently present insurmountable difficulties, both computationally and in terms of interpreting the resulting variation in a crosscultural light. While we are aware that the relationships we report here may vary at lower levels of aggregation (Kravdal 2012;, these may be better assessed on a country-by-country basis that takes this complexity more fully into account. Future research will surely examine these important aspects in more detail and this study is a first step towards quantifying these differences cross-culturally.…”

Spousal and Household Characteristics Associated with Women’s Fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…Ikamari (2005) in a study of the influence of education on marriage timing in Kenya found that women who are more educated married later and this further increased their age at first birth. Other studies on education-fertility relationship found that education above the primary level influenced fertility more (Gupta & Mahy, 2003;Kravdal, 2001;Shapiro, 2012) while some found the community level education as an important predictor of fertility in addition to individual woman's education (Benefo, 2006;Kravdal, 2002Kravdal, , 2012Moursund & Kravdal, 2003). If women's age and age at marriage and their level of education attainment have been found to influence their fertility, it is pertinent to also examine the influence of spousal age, age at marriage and their educational attainment on women's fertility as well.…”

Effects of the Number and Age of Siblings on Educational Transitions in Sub‐Saharan Africa

“…A woman's birth rate at a given age is presumably influenced by the characteristics of the community in which she lived at that time, such as the average level of education (Kravdal 2012). Her children's education is also likely to be influenced by such aggregate factors.…”