IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/wbecrv/v35y2021i2p480-498..html

Free Primary Education, Fertility, and Women’s Access to the Labor Market: Evidence from Ethiopia

Author

Listed:
  • Luke Chicoine

Abstract

This article investigates the causal relationship between women’s schooling and fertility by exploiting variation generated by the removal of school fees in Ethiopia. The increase in schooling caused by the reform is identified using both geographic variation in the intensity of its impact and temporal variation generated by the timing of the implementation. The model finds that the removal of school fees led to an increase in schooling for Ethiopian women and that each additional year of schooling led to a reduction in fertility. An investigation of the underlying mechanisms linking schooling and fertility finds that the decline in fertility is associated with an increase in labor market opportunity and a reduction in women’s ideal number of children.

Suggested Citation

  • Luke Chicoine, 2021. "Free Primary Education, Fertility, and Women’s Access to the Labor Market: Evidence from Ethiopia," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 35(2), pages 480-498.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:wbecrv:v:35:y:2021:i:2:p:480-498.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/wber/lhz042
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhang, Hongliang & Assaad, Ragui, 2024. "Women’s access to school, educational attainment, and fertility: Evidence from Jordan," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    2. Small, Sarah F. & van der Meulen Rodgers, Yana, 2023. "The gendered effects of investing in physical and social infrastructure," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    3. Weldeegzie, Samuel, 2023. "The persistent effect of conflict on educational outcomes: Evidence from Ethiopia," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    4. Martin Foureaux Koppensteiner & Jesse Matheson, 2021. "Secondary Schools and Teenage Childbearing: Evidence from the School Expansion in Brazilian Municipalities," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 35(4), pages 1019-1037.
    5. McGavock, Tamara, 2021. "Here waits the bride? The effect of Ethiopia's child marriage law," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    6. La Mattina, Giulia & Shemyakina, Olga N., 2024. "Growing up amid armed conflict: Women's attitudes toward domestic violence," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(3), pages 645-662.
    7. Kazibwe, Douglas & Li, Jinhu, 2025. "Universal secondary education, schooling and women ’s empowerment: Evidence from Uganda," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 174(C).
    8. Kotaro Fujisaki, 2025. "Policy for Closing Education Gaps across Gender and Culture: Tuition-Free Education or School Construction?," Discussion Paper Series DP2025-16, Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University, revised Oct 2025.
    9. Alaref, Jumana Jamal Subhi & Patil, Aishwarya Shivaji & Rahman, Tasmia & Munoz Boudet, Ana Maria, 2024. "Women’s Labor Force Participation in Nepal : An Exploration of The Role of Social Norms," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10810, The World Bank.
    10. Roxana Elena Manea; Pedro Naso, 2020. "School Fee Elimination and Educational Inequality in Tanzania," CIES Research Paper series 64-2020, Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute.
    11. Roxana Elena Manea; Pedro Naso, 2021. "Heterogeneous Impacts of School Fee Elimination in Tanzania: Gender and Colonial Infrastructure," CIES Research Paper series 64-2020, Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:wbecrv:v:35:y:2021:i:2:p:480-498.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wrldbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.