Women's Education, Autonomy, and Reproductive Behaviour: Experience from Developing Countries

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Women's access to education has been recognized as a fundamental right. At the national level, educating women results in improved productivity, income, and economic development, as well as a better quality of life, notably a healthier and better nourished population. It is important for allkinds of demographic behavior, affecting mortality, health, fertility, and contraception, The personal benefits that women attach to education vary widely according to region, culture, and level of development, but it is clear that education empowers women, providing them with increased autonomy andresulting in almost every context in fewer children. Beyond these few general assertions, however, there is little consensus on such issues as how much education is required before changes in autonomy or reproductive behavior occur, whether the education-autonomy relationship exists in all culturalcontexts, at all times, and at all levels of development, and which aspects of autonomy are important in the relationship between education and fertility. It is in the need to address these fundamental issues that this book took shape. The author reviews the considerable evidence about education and fertility in the developing world that has emerged over the last twenty years, and then passes beyond the limits of previous studies to address threemajor questions: BL Does increased education always lead to a decrease in the number of children, or is there a threshold level of education that a woman must achieve before this inverse relationship becomes apparent? BL What are the critical pathways influencing the relationship of women's education to fertility? Is fertility affectedbecause education leads to changes in the duration of breast-feeding? Because it raises the age at marriage? Because it increases the practice of contraception? Or becauseeducation reduces women's preferences for large numbers of children? BL Do improvements in educatio