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No. 82, 1995 Montgomery, Mark, Aka Kouam‚ and Raylynn Oliver. "The tradeoff between the number of children and their schooling: Evidence from Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana," Policy Research Division Working Paper no. 82. New York: Population Council. Abstract This paper explores the relationship between fertility levels and the investments made by West African parents in their children's schooling. As a rule, one expects that families with many children will invest less in each, and that families with fewer children will make greater human capital investments per child. This "tradeoff" between quantity and quality is illustrated in the recent course of economic development in Southeast Asia and Latin America. In sub-Saharan Africa, however, the existence of a tradeoff has not been established. The few studies conducted to date either find no particular association between family size and schooling in Africa or uncover hints of a positive relationship wherein higher fertility is linked to greater schooling per child. This paper weighs the evidence concerning the quantity-quality tradeoff in West Africa, using data from the Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana Living Standards Measurement Surveys. The evidence suggests that in Côte d'Ivoire, two distinct relationships link fertility and child schooling. In rural areas, there is no tradeoff in evidence: higher fertility is associated with higher child schooling. This finding is consistent with much of the early research on African fertility and schooling levels. The urban areas of Côte d'Ivoire, however, are characterized by the tradeoff that appears in Southeast Asia and elsewhere in the developing world. Women's education, which lowers fertility and raises investments in child schooling, is an important factor producing the tradeoff in urban areas, and the results also imply that improved child survival may be important. An additional explanation for the absence of a tradeoff in rural areas is a lack of access to family planning services. In Ghana a tradeoff between fertility and schooling is apparent in both rural and urban areas. The most striking findings are the large impact of mother's schooling in lowering fertility and raising child schooling, and the large predicted impact of mother's secondary schooling, particularly in rural areas. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
