Why does female education have a direct effect on fertility? The economic theory of fertility suggests an incentive effect: more educated women have higher opportunity costs of bearing children in terms of lost income. Female education has a greater impact on age of marriage and delayed fertility than male education.

The social structure, religious beliefs, economic prosperity and urbanisation within each country are likely to affect birth rates as well as abortion rates, Developed countries tend to have a lower fertility rate due to lifestyle choices associated with economic affluence where mortality rates are low, birth control …

Socioeconomic and women’s status variables explained 78.2% (62.6% for socioeconomic factors) of the variance in infant mortality in developing countries and 89.9% in developed countries. Women’s status factors increased explanatory power by 6.4% for life expectancy at birth.

We find that female employment reduces the number of children per woman by 25%, and that this fertility-reducing effect is as large for poor as for non-poor women and larger for illiterate than for literate women.

Empowering women is the most effective way to reduce fertility rates and achieve a sustainable population size that respects the limits of Earth’s carrying capacity. The number of years a woman has spent in education is usually inversely correlated with the number of children she will bear in her lifetime.

McDonald (2000a and 2000b) argues that cleavages in gender equity between individual-oriented social institutions (such as education or employment) and family-oriented social institutions (such as familial childcare) lead to lower fertility: If women’s educational attainment and labor-force participation increase to …