(DP 1976-28) Income Education, Fertility and Employment: Philippines 1973

Abstract

The quantitative model presented in this paper employs 5 estimated equations involving fertility, female employment, age at marriage, husband's income and family income as endogenous variables. The model features a threshold hypothesis apropos fetility and wife's employment: the marginal effects of income and educational level are positive or negative depending on whether or not these variables fall below certain thresholds. Empirical verification was focused on a cross section of households drawn from the 1973 National Demographic Survey. Separate parameter estimates were done for an all, rural urban samples. The findings for all and rural cases showed education of the wife as a key factor in lending a negative effect on fertility beyond certain income and education thresholds and a positive effect on the wife's participation in market activities above an income threshold. The findings highlight from a policy viewpoint the need for pushing the education threshold to zero such that more years of schooling will invariably lead to lower family size and increased market participation of the wife. For the urban case, we are led to conjecture that the negative marginal effect of education on fertility is felt at lower years of schooling than in the rural case.