Women's education and the timing and level of fertility

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the impacts of women's education on the mean age of women at first birth (denoting the timing of fertility) and total fertility rate (TFR, denoting the level of fertility) using cross-country panel data.

Design/methodology/approach

The estimations proceed in two steps: first, the timing and level of fertility regressions are separately estimated, and second, two regressions are estimated at the same time as a form of a system equation to accommodate the correlations between error terms.

Findings

It is found that a higher women's education tends to delay of child birth or family formation. In addition, there exists a negative relationship between the female secondary school enrollment ratio and TFR, meaning that the opportunity costs of childbearing and rearing increases when the level of women's education enhances. However, the authors have also found that the impacts of women's higher education on TFR is statistically insignificant in a few cases of estimations without sample selections.

Originality/value

Fertility decline is a shift of childbearing to older ages. The delay of child birth or family formation is the major cause of the recent fertility decline, because a late women's age at first birth reduces the chances of having any further children. This implies that the timing and level of fertility are highly correlated to each other. In particular, many studies showed that women's education and employment have been identified as major parameters for the increase in women's age at first birth. Nonetheless, little attention has been paid to an empirical analysis of the relationship between women's education and the timing of fertility. Therefore, this paper is an extension of previous studies, estimating the relationship between women's education and the timing and level of fertility at the same time.

Citation

Hwang, J. and Ha Lee, J. (2014), "Women's education and the timing and level of fertility", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 41 No. 9, pp. 862-874. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSE-06-2013-0153