Evaluating Education’s Impact on Declining Fertility

IIASA scientists have pioneered a new approach to restore fertility and education data, specifically in developing nations facing erratic or uncertain data sets. Accurate and consistent data is crucial for policymakers to assess how women’s education influences fertility rates, especially during times of educational growth and declining fertility, a prevalent trend globally.

Evaluating Education’s Impact on Declining Fertility: demographic concerns

In developing countries, demographic concerns are intertwined with various challenges like economic disparities, limited healthcare access, educational inequalities, environmental changes, and political instability.

Getting accurate and consistent data about fertility rates based on education and age remains a challenge in various regions. To address this, researchers, including Afua Durowaa-Boateng from the Vienna Institute of Demography, developed a modeling framework that reconstructs existing data.

This method helps assess how education impacts fertility decline, offering historical evidence for future population projections. Published in Demographic Research, the study’s reconstructed data fills gaps in available time series data, aiding assessments of education’s role in fertility decline.

Evaluating Education’s Impact on Declining Fertility: highly educated women

The study confirms that highly educated women generally have lower fertility rates and tend to have children later. Initially, educated women might have had higher fertility rates compared to those without education, as observed in sub-Saharan Africa during the fertility decline in the 1980s. As education levels rise, the fertility rate gap between different educational backgrounds widens and later narrows, as seen in many Latin American countries from the 1970s to 2020.

The research suggests that as more women become educated and reduce fertility, less-educated women tend to follow suit within their communities. These insights are crucial for policymakers and organizations in low-income countries, shedding light on education’s impact on fertility behavior.

The findings

The findings provide valuable information for scholars using consistent time series data in their models. Additionally, this research opens doors for reconstructing incomplete education-specific demographic data on fertility in regions like South Asia.

“The ability for more researchers to examine education’s role in fertility decline during demographic transitions, along with the significance of age-related changes in fertility based on education, can significantly contribute to population projections. These projections are part of IIASA’s Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, which explore different scenarios of education development.

The impact of education on fertility behavior has substantial implications for policymakers and international organizations operating in low-income nations, emphasizes Goujon, IIASA’s Population and Just Societies Program Director.

The researchers intend their accessible data and model to assist scholars and policymakers tackling worldwide demographic issues, with a focus on Africa. Future plans include expanding the website to encompass further research on African populations in the near term.

Read the original article on sciencedaily.

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