How female education reduces fertility: Models and needed research. Mid-American Review of Sociology 4(1

Improved educational opportunities for women in developing nations has come to be viewed as the prime institutional variable amenable to policy manipulation that can help lower fertility rates. Indeed, there appears to be substantial faith in the mass education of young women as the one sure hope for slowing rapid population growth. This faith has been affirmed in the past decade by a number of empirical studies that show education to exhibit a stronger and more consistent negative relationship to fertility than any other single variable (see Holsinger and Kasarda, 1976a, 1976b for literature review). As one illustration, Boguc (1969), analyzing the relative impact of nine indexes of modernization on fertility found that education alone accounted for 56 percent of the variance in the movement of nations from high to low fertility, whereas all other indexes of modernization combined accounted for only an additional 16 percent of the variance. On the basis of this analysis he concluded: Rising education levels, increased school attendance, and elimination of early marriage are much more powerful in promoting fertility reduction than simple urbanization and rising levels of living. A major driving force behind fertility reduction appears to be education.... If this is true, it should be comparatively easy to discover what aspect of rising literacy and educational attainment is most intimately related to lower fertility and then to 'mass produce ' it on a large scale to hasten fertility tieeime in advance of other aspects of education attainment. (1969:676-677, italics added