IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hka/wpaper/2022-035.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the Doorstep of Adulthood: Empowering Economic and Fertility Choices of Young Women

Author

Listed:
  • Lars Ivar Oppedal Berge

    (Norwegian School of Economics)

  • Kjetil Bjorvatn

    (Norwegian School of Economics)

  • Fortunata Makene

    (Economic and Social Research Foundation)

  • Linda Helgesson Sekei

    (NIRAS)

  • Vincent Somville

    (Norwegian School of Economics and Chr. Michelsen Institute)

  • Bertil Tungodden

    (Norwegian School of Economics)

Abstract

We report from a large-scale randomized controlled trial of women empowerment in Tanzania investigating how two different empowerment strategies, economic empowerment and reproductive health empowerment, shape the economic and fertility choices of young women when they transition into adulthood. The analysis builds on a rich data set (survey, experimental, and medical data) collected over more than five years. The economic empowerment reduces poverty, while teenage pregnancy increases with both economic and reproductive health empowerment. The increase in fertility comes from a positive income effect and by women entering earlier into a relationship. We also provide evidence of the importance of social norms and labor market flexibility in explaining the income and relationship effects on fertility. The findings provide new insights on the economics of fertility, and show the importance of a comprehensive approach to women empowerment.

Suggested Citation

  • Lars Ivar Oppedal Berge & Kjetil Bjorvatn & Fortunata Makene & Linda Helgesson Sekei & Vincent Somville & Bertil Tungodden, 2022. "On the Doorstep of Adulthood: Empowering Economic and Fertility Choices of Young Women," Working Papers 2022-035, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    • Handle: RePEc:hka:wpaper:2022-035
    Note: MIP
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Berge_Bjorvatn_Makene_etal_2022_doorstep-of-adulthood.pdf
    File Function: First version, October 27, 2022
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Matthias Doepke & Anne Hannusch & Fabian Kindermann & Michèle Tertilt, 2022. "The Economics of Fertility: A New Era," NBER Working Papers 29948, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Sebastian Galiani & Paul J Gertler & Raimundo Undurraga, 2018. "The Half-Life of Happiness: Hedonic Adaptation in the Subjective Well-Being of Poor Slum Dwellers to the Satisfaction of Basic Housing Needs," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 16(4), pages 1189-1233.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Céline Zipfel, 2022. "The demand side of Africa's demographic transition: desired fertility, wealth, and jobs," STICERD - Economic Organisation and Public Policy Discussion Papers Series 71, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dong, Xiaoqi & Liang, Yinhe & Zhang, Jiawei, 2023. "Fertility responses to the relaxation of migration restrictions: Evidence from the Hukou reform in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    2. Nicolas Abad & Johanna Etner & Natacha Raffin & Thomas Seegmuller, 2024. "New fertility patterns: The role of human versus physical capital," Working Papers hal-04577278, HAL.
    3. Cornelius Christian & Lukas Hensel & Christopher Roth, 2019. "Income Shocks and Suicides: Causal Evidence From Indonesia," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 101(5), pages 905-920, December.
    4. Koopmans, Pim & van Lent, Max & Been, Jim, 2024. "Child Penalties and the Gender Gap in Home Production and the Labor Market," IZA Discussion Papers 16871, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Lele, Uma, 2024. "Determinants of Female Labor Force Participation in India," IAAE 2024 Conference, August 2-7, 2024, New Delhi, India 344351, International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE).
    6. Fernández-Villaverde, Jesús & Delventhal, Matthew J. & Guner, Nezih, 2021. "Demographic Transitions Across Time and Space," CEPR Discussion Papers 16708, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Zhang, Zheyuan & Zhao, Zhong, 2023. "Women's education and fertility in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    8. Amaral, Pedro S., 2023. "The demographic transition and the asset supply channel," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    9. Iregui-Bohórquez, Ana María & Melo-Becerra, Ligia Alba & Ramírez-Giraldo, María Teresa & Tribín-Uribe, Ana María & Zárate-Solano, Héctor M., 2024. "Unraveling the factors behind women’s empowerment in the labor market in Colombia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 183(C).
    10. João Galindo da Fonseca & Charles Berubé, 2023. "Spouses, Children, And Entrepreneurship," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 64(3), pages 1165-1199, August.
    11. Galiani, Sebastian & Gertler, Paul J. & Undurraga, Raimundo, 2021. "Aspiration adaptation in resource-constrained environments," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    12. Valentina Melentyeva & Lukas Riedel, 2023. "Child Penalty Estimation and Mothers’ Age at First Birth," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 266, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    13. Riukula, Krista, 2024. "Childhood Shocks and Fertility: Evidence from Parental Job Loss," ETLA Working Papers 112, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    14. Miles, David, 2023. "Macroeconomic impacts of changes in life expectancy and fertility," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 24(C).
    15. Johanna Etner & Natacha Raffin & Thomas Seegmuller, 2022. "Postponement, career development and fertility rebound," Working Papers hal-03862590, HAL.
    16. Fiaschi, Davide & Tealdi, Cristina, 2023. "The attachment of adult women to the Italian labour market in the shadow of COVID-19," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    17. Paula Carrasco & Rodrigo Ceni & Ivonne Perazzo & Gonzalo Salas, 2019. "Are not any silver in the cloud? Subjective well-being among deprived young people," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 19-09, Instituto de Economía - IECON.
    18. Bhalotra, Sonia & Clarke, Damian & Walther, Selma, 2022. "Women's Careers and Family Formation," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1120, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    19. Micael Dahlen & Helge Thorbjørnsen, 2022. "Individuals’ Assessments of Their Own Wellbeing, Subjective Welfare, and Good Life: Four Exploratory Studies," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(19), pages 1-10, September.
    20. Paula Carrasco & Rodrigo Ceni & Ivone Perazzo & Gonzalo Salas, 2021. "Are Not Any Silver Linings in the Cloud? Subjective Well-being Among Deprived Young People," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 491-516, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Tanzania; reproductive health; teenage pregnancy; positive income effect; Girl's Economic Empowerment: a Randomized Experiment in Tanzanian Schools;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • I15 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Economic Development
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hka:wpaper:2022-035. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jennifer Pachon (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mfichus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.