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Understanding the relationship between women’s education and fertility decline: Evidence from Colombia

Author

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  • Juliana Jaramillo-Echeverri

Abstract

Across the world educated women tend to have fewer children than their less-educated peers. This paper provides new stylised facts about the long-run relationship between women’s education and fertility at both the national and individual levels. I focus on Colombia, a country that experienced both a rapid fertility decline and fast expansion of education in the mid-20th century and I use data from the censuses of 1973, 1985, 1993, 2005 and 2018. The findings caution that the relationship between fertility and women’s education is not always monotonic and this relationship changes significantly depending on the aggregation of the data. At the individual level, the relationship between education and fertility holds strongly and education increases the probability of remaining childless, reduces the total number of children and the likelihood of having a birth at a younger and older age, suggesting a strong trade-off between education and fertility. Peer effects, such as the percentage of peers with secondary education, are ruled out, which suggests that the externalities of education had a moderate effect on uneducated women. On the other hand, at the national level, the fertility decline cannot be explained by education as fertility has fallen continuously in all educational groups since 1965. **** RESUMEN: En el mundo, las mujeres más educadas tienden a tener menos hijos que las menos educadas. Este documento presenta nuevos hechos estilizados sobre la relación a largo plazo entre la educación de las mujeres y la fecundidad, tanto a nivel nacional como individual. El documento se enfoca en Colombia, un país que experimentó una rápida caída en la fecundidad así como una rápida expansión de la educación a mediados del siglo XX. Con los datos de los censos de 1973, 1985, 1993, 2005 y 2018, los resultados advierten que la relación entre la fecundidad y la educación de las mujeres no siempre es estable y por el contrario cambia dependiendo de la agregación de los datos. A nivel individual, la educación aumenta la probabilidad de permanecer sin hijos, reduce el número total de hijos y disminuye la probabilidad de tener un hijo a una edad temprana, lo que sugiere un fuerte tradeoff entre educación y fecundidad. Se descartan los efectos de los pares, como el que puede tener el porcentaje de mujeres con educación secundaria, lo que sugiere que las externalidades de la educación tuvieron un efecto moderado en las mujeres no educadas. Por otro lado, a nivel nacional, el declive en la fecundidad no puede explicarse únicamente por el aumento en la educación, ya que la misma ha disminuido continuamente en todos los grupos educativos desde 1965.

Suggested Citation

  • Juliana Jaramillo-Echeverri, 2024. "Understanding the relationship between women’s education and fertility decline: Evidence from Colombia," Cuadernos de Historia Económica 63, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
  • Handle: RePEc:bdr:cheedt:63
    DOI: 10.32468/chee.63
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    fertility; education; Colombia; census data; fecundidad; educación; Colombia; datos censales;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J11 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • I25 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Economic Development
    • N36 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Latin America; Caribbean
    • O35 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Social Innovation

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