Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Education has long been associated with women's reproductive behavior. Women with more schooling are consistently observed to marry at a later age and have fewer, yet healthier, children. Many African countries eliminated primary school tuition fees in the 1990s in an effort to make education more accessible, particularly for girls. Dramatic increases in enrollment followed fee removal. In sub-Saharan Africa where fertility rates are high, increased access to schooling has the potential to significantly improve population health. The impact of tuition fee removal on predictors of fertility has not been evaluated. We used data collected from nationally representative household surveys in 18 African countries to estimate trends in the average age at sexual debut, first marriage, and first birth among women born between 1950 and 1996. These data were combined with information on the timing of tuition fees removal in each country. We estimated the effect of removing tuition fees on the average age at sexual debut, first marriage, and first birth using an analytic approach that compared women who went to primary school under tuition-free policies to those who did not. The average age at sexual debut, first marriage, and first birth changed very little over our 46-year study period. We found no evidence that removing tuition fees significantly delayed the timing of these events. Our findings indicate that enacting tuition-elimination policies did not have an effect on important predictors of fertility. Ineffective policies are one plausible explanation. Legislative adoption of policies does not always translate to effective implementation on the ground. Evaluating these policies is important for population health because the expected impact on fertility, and other benefits associated with improved educational attainment, will only be realized if they are effectively implemented.