Suchergebnisse

The expansion of female education has been promoted as a way to postpone the age at first birth. In sub‐Saharan Africa, the first cohorts to benefit from policies that expanded access to education are now reaching adulthood and beginning childbearing. I investigate whether the expansion of education in Malawi, which implemented a free primary education policy in 1994 and subsequently expanded secondary schooling, has led to a later age at first birth and whether the education gradient in fertility timing has remained stable over time. Despite increases in female grade attainment over the past twenty years, the age at first birth has not changed. Using instrumental variables analysis, I find a significant negative association between grade attainment and age at first birth, suggesting that the deterioration of school quality and the shift in the age pattern of enrollment that accompanied educational expansion may have compromised the transformative potential of education.

Little is known about whether the timing of marriage is used as a strategy to avoid HIV infection among young people in sub‐Saharan Africa. Analyzing five rounds of longitudinal data from the Malawi Schooling and Adolescent Survey, we do not find support for the hypothesis that young women's perceived chances of future HIV infection are associated with the transition to marriage, but we do find evidence that young married women who see themselves as at risk of future infection have a greater likelihood of divorcing than do women who perceive no chance of future infection. We also use individual‐level fixed‐effects regressions to examine how the transition to marriage affects respondents' expectations of future HIV infection. Respondents are consistently more likely to perceive any chance of future HIV infection in the years following marriage than in the years preceding it. Our findings suggest that young women revise their risk perceptions based on their marital experiences and that divorce may serve as a protective strategy for young married women concerned about their chance of future HIV infection.

Conventional wisdom holds that gender gaps in schooling favoring males in developing countries generally are large, though probably declining. In this article we re‐examine recent gender gaps in schooling in the developing world and come to a more nuanced characterization of their nature, which suggests that the developing countries are becoming more like the developed countries, with gender gaps that increasingly favor, rather than discriminate against, females. Using data from 38 countries with multiple Demographic and Health Surveys, we examine how the gender gaps in current school enrollment and grade completion emerge across the educational life course from age 6 to 18. We also examine how these age‐specific measures have changed over time, comparing the periods 1990–99 and 2000–06. Our analyses indicate that among children who have ever attended school, girls younger than 16 years of age have equal or greater schooling progress than boys of the same age in all regions of the developing world.

This study uses data from KwaZulu‐Natal, South Africa, to examine the factors associated with schoolgirl pregnancy and subsequent educational pathways. We find that prior schooling discontinuities—defined as instances of non‐pregnancy‐related grade repetition or temporary withdrawals from school—are strongly associated with a young woman's likelihood of later becoming pregnant while enrolled in school, dropping out of school if she becomes pregnant, and not returning to school following a pregnancy‐related dropout. Young women who are the primary caregivers to their children are also significantly more likely to leave school than are those who have help with their childcare responsibilities. Given the increasing importance of female school participation in sub‐Saharan Africa, programs must be designed to reach girls and their families early to increase incentives for ensuring their timely progression through school and to increase their access to reproductive health information and services.

We assess factors affecting primary and middle school dropout in rural Punjab and NorthWest Frontier Province over 6 years (1997-2004). These data are unique in a developing-country setting in longitudinally tracking changes in both school and household environments. While grade retention has improved, girls' dropout rates remain fairly high. Results suggest the importance of both household and school factors. For girls, arrival in the family of an unwanted birth in the last 6 years and enrollment in a government (not private) primary school significantly increase the likelihood of dropout, whereas availability of post-primary schooling, having a mother who attended school, and living in a better-off household reduce the probability of dropout. For boys, school quality, measured by the percent of residential teachers in the primary school, and living in a more developed community significantly reduce the probability of dropping out; loss of household remittances significantly increases the likelihood of dropout.

AbstractThis article provides updated estimates of trends in modern contraceptive use among young adult women (aged 15–24) who have had sex, using Demographic and Health Survey data from 23 sub‐Saharan African countries (1990–2014). In East/South Africa, parous women had higher modern contraceptive use than nulliparous women and larger increases in modern contraceptive use over time. In the West/Central region, nulliparous women had higher modern contraceptive use than parous women and larger increases in modern contraceptive use over time. Most of the increase in modern contraceptive use was driven by an increase in short‐acting—rather than long‐acting—methods across regions and parity groups. Although parous women had higher unmet need for family planning in both regions, nulliparous women had larger increases in unmet need for family planning over time in the East/South region. Decomposition analysis suggests that increases in use of modern contraceptives are largely driven by increases in the rate of contraceptive use rather than changes in the parity composition of women.

This report presents the results of a longitudinal study of changing educational opportunities in rural Punjab and N.W.F.P. from 1997 to 2004. The purpose of the study was to answer two major research questions: what were the effects of changes in schooling opportunities in the community over the past six years on enrollment and attainment, and what were the effects on family planning and fertility behavior? This study builds on an earlier study undertaken in 1997. As noted in this report, the study is innovative in several ways: (1) it is longitudinal; (2) it combines consideration of three dimensions of schooling opportunity structures in the community—access, choice, and quality; (3) it considers the availability of school choice, in particular private versus government and religious versus secular, as a factor in educational attainment and performance; and (4) it defines schooling opportunity structures separately for boys and girls on all three dimensions—quality, choice, and access. The longitudinal nature of the study has two dimensions: a school component and a household-based component. All schools visited in the first survey were revisited in the second survey as were women previously interviewed in 1997.

Published by the Population Council's Islamabad office, this is the first comprehensive survey of Pakistani youth. The report provides an unprecedented view of young people's experiences with and attitudes about education, employment, families, and marriage. The report findings confirm the large differences in the current situation of adolescents and youth, males versus females, from different strata of residence and economic status. Addressing these requires government intervention, changes in attitude, and input from the media, women and youth groups, and members of civil society.