Fertility and Women’s Schooling in Ghana

Abstract

As in the previous chapter, the analysis here focuses on changes in a ‘non-economic’ outcome brought about by improvements in school quality. In this case, the outcome of interest is fertility, the number of children a woman chooses to bear. High fertility is an important concern because short birth intervals and additional births to women who have already had several children pose an increased health risk to both the mother and the child. For this and other reasons, lowering total fertility levels and increasing contraceptive prevalence are important public policy objectives in many developing countries.

For guidance and helpful comments on this and related earlier work, the author gratefully acknowledges the contributions of Martha Ainsworth, Julie Anderson Schaffner, Marcel Fafchamps, Paul Glewwe, Anjini Kochar and John Pencavel.