Free Primary Education, Schooling, and Fertility: Evidence from Ethiopia

This paper investigates the causal relationship between women's education and fertility by exploiting variation generated by the removal of school fees in Ethiopia. The increase in schooling caused by this reform is identified using both geographic variation in the intensity of the reform's impact and the temporal variation generated by the implementation of the reform. The model finds that the removal of school fees in Ethiopia led to an increase of over 1.5 years of schooling for women affected by the reform. A two-stage least squares approach is used to measure the impact of the exogenous increase in schooling on fertility. Each additional year of schooling led to a reduction in fertility, a delay in sexual activity, marriage, and the timing of at least their first, second, and third births. There is also evidence that the increase in schooling led to improved labor market outcomes, and a reduction in the desired number of children. Additionally, there is evidence of strategic use of hidden forms of contraception, only after family size becomes sufficiently large or after two sons have been born

Increasing Rural Health Clinic Utilization with SMS Updates: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Uganda

This paper examines an alternative to monitoring staff at a public health clinic in rural Uganda. The program sent SMS updates regarding confirmed attendance of clinic staff and activities to randomly selected cell phone-owning households in the local community. A difference-in-difference approach is used to evaluate the impact of the SMS program, and finds the messages led to an increase in clinic attendance, the receipt of medicine, and reduced duration of illness for young children aged six and under. However, these benefits are only seen for children who are the same sex as the cell phone owner, suggesting favoritism towards the health of these children. These benefits are found to be similar for both boys and girls

Education and fertility: Evidence from a policy change in Kenya

This paper investigates the relationship between women's education and fertility by exploiting a 1985 policy change in Kenya that lengthened primary school by one year. An instrumental variables approach measures the exogenous variation in treatment intensity across birth cohorts. The reform led to an increase in education, a delay in marriage, and reduced fertility beginning at the age of 20. The effect on fertility becomes increasingly negative through age 25. The findings suggest that postponement of marriage, reduction in the marital education gap, and increased early use of modern contraceptives contribute to reduced fertility. These results are consistent with women having greater control over their fertility decision

Identifying National Level Education Reforms in Developing Settings: An Application to Ethiopia

Increasing enrollment in primary education has been at the center of international education policy for well over a decade. In developing parts of the world, significant increases in primary enrollment are often generated by large national level programs, which can simultaneously promote overcrowding and reductions in education quality. However, to analyze the trade-off between increased enrollment and potential reductions in quality one must first identify and evaluate the impact of the national reform on schooling. This paper provides a method with which these types of reforms can be identified in developing settings using both temporal and geographic variation, and readily available data. The method is applied to an early 1990s reform in Ethiopia based around the release of the Education and Training Policy, which removed schooling fees from grades one to ten. The model estimates that the reform led to an increase in schooling of at least 1.2 years, and provides initial evidence that the increased enrollment in Ethiopia outweighed any cost due to reductions in quality