Empowerment in an unequal world

This paper examines the association between fertility levels and women’s economic empowerment among African South Africans. The analysis draws from three national-level household surveys and relies primarily on multi-level modeling. The paper explores the relationship between district-level fertility levels and young women’s educational attainment, as well as women’s employment status, also considering the effects of household and community level income inequality on these relationships.

The abstract is available here. This research is part of a series of empirical studies from the Fertility and Empowerment Network, which is examining whether and to what extent increasingly smaller family sizes in lower and middle income countries have empowered women or resulted in fundamental transformations in inequitable gender systems.