Schooling, Marriage and Age of First Birth in Madagascar

38 Pages Posted: 31 Jan 2015

See all articles by Peter Glick

Peter Glick

RAND Corporation

Christopher Handy

University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill

David E. Sahn

Cornell University

Multiple version iconThere are 3 versions of this paper

Abstract

Low female schooling attainment, early marriage and low age at first birth are major policy concerns in developing countries. This paper jointly estimated the determinants of educational attainment, marriage age and age of first birth among females 12 to 25 years of age in Madagascar, explicitly accounting for the endogeneities that arose from modeling these related outcomes simultaneously. An additional year of schooling resulted in a delay of marriage by 1.5 years. Marrying one year later delayed the age of first birth by 0.5 years. Parental education and wealth also had important effects on schooling, marriage and age at first birth: among other findings, a woman's first birth was delayed by 0.75 years for four additional years of schooling of her mother. Overall, the results provided rigorous evidence for the critical role of education – both own education and that of parents – in delaying marriage and fertility of young women.

Keywords: education, marriage, fertility, joint estimation, Madagascar

JEL Classification: J12, J13, I20, C3

Suggested Citation

Glick, Peter and Handy, Christopher and Sahn, David E., Schooling, Marriage and Age of First Birth in Madagascar. IZA Discussion Paper No. 8795, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2558394 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2558394

Peter Glick (Contact Author)

RAND Corporation ( email )

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Christopher Handy

University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill ( email )

102 Ridge Road
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David E. Sahn

Cornell University ( email )

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United States
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HOME PAGE: http://courses.cit.cornell.edu/des16

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