Schooling, marriage, and age at first birth in Madagascar

Abstract

The low school attainment, early marriage, and low age at first birth of females are major policy concerns in less developed countries. This study jointly estimated the determinants of educational attainment, marriage age, and age at first birth among females aged 12–25 in Madagascar, explicitly accounting for the endogeneities that arose from modelling these related outcomes simultaneously. An additional year of schooling results in a delay to marriage of 1.5 years and marrying 1 year later delays age at first birth by 0.5 years. Parents’ education and wealth also have important effects on schooling, marriage, and age at first birth, with a woman's first birth being delayed by 0.75 years if her mother had 4 additional years of schooling. Overall, our results provide rigorous evidence for the critical role of education—both individual women's own and that of their parents—in delaying the marriage and fertility of young women.

Keywords:

• education
• marriage
• fertility
• joint estimation
• Madagascar

Notes

1 David E. Sahn is at Cornell University, B16 MVR Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA. E-mail: [email protected]. Peter Glick is at the RAND Corporation. Christopher Handy is at Washington and Lee University.

2 The work was supported by the IZA/DFID GLM | LIC Program under Grant Agreement GA-C1-RA4-067. This document is an output from a project funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) for the benefit of less developed countries. The views expressed are not necessarily those of DFID or IZA. The authors also acknowledge support from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), and Agence Inter-établissements de Recherche pour le Développement (AIRD).