The influence of community fertility levels on African South African women’s educational attainment

We examine the effects of community fertility levels on women’s education in South Africa, conceptualizing community fertility as a socio-cultural construct with bearing on individual outcomes. This paper contributes to the recent assertion that fertility decline may be a catalyst for women’s empowerment. We examine the effects of community fertility levels for older women on educational attainment for younger women as compared to younger men through two outcomes: 1) highest educational level attained for 25-29 year olds; and 2) grade for age for 14-18 year olds. We use data from the South African Community Survey (2007). We expect that lagged community fertility will be more strongly associated with women’s as compared to men’s educational attainment when controlling for indivudal, household and other socio-economic community-level effects. We do not find this to be the case for completed education, but do find this to be the case for grade for age models. We discuss the implications of our findings for our conceptualization of community fertility; as well as the implications for the intersections between gender, population and development in sub-Saharan Africa.