Volume 49 - Article 31 | Pages 809–848
A Bayesian model for the reconstruction of education- and age-specific fertility rates: An application to African and Latin American countries
By Afua Durowaa-Boateng, Dilek Yildiz, Anne Goujon
Abstract
Background: Consistent and reliable time series of education- and age-specific fertility rates for the past are difficult to obtain in developing countries, although they are needed to evaluate the impact of women’s education on fertility across periods and cohorts.
Objective: We aim to fill the existing gap by reconstructing age-specific fertility rates by level of education for a large sample of African and Latin American countries from 1970 to 2020 in 5-year steps.
Methods: We develop a Bayesian framework to reconstruct age-specific fertility rates by level of education using prior information from the birth history module of the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS).
Results: We find that the Bayesian approach allows for estimating reliable education- and age-specific fertility rates using multiple rounds of the DHS surveys. The time series obtained confirm the main findings of the literature on fertility trends and age- and education-specific differentials.
Conclusions: From a methodological point of view, we show that the Bayesian reconstruction model allows for estimating missing data on fertility by level of educational attainment. This information is key when we account for the role of education in fertility rates and assess the impacts of education policies in countries in Africa and Latin America.
Contribution: We propose an advanced statistical model which fills gaps in time series when data are missing, and provide complete and UN WPP-consistent age-specific fertility rates for 50 countries.
Author's Affiliation
- Afua Durowaa-Boateng - Vienna Institute of Demography (Austrian Academy of Sciences), Austria EMAIL
- Dilek Yildiz - International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria EMAIL
- Anne Goujon - Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital (IIASA, OeAW, University of Vienna), Austria EMAIL
Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research
A multidimensional global migration model for use in cohort-component population projections
Volume 51 - Article 11
Assessing the demographic impact of migration on the working-age population across European territories
Volume 46 - Article 9
Using Twitter data for demographic research
Volume 37 - Article 46
Exploring the fertility trend in Egypt
Volume 37 - Article 32
Education stalls and subsequent stalls in African fertility: A descriptive overview
Volume 33 - Article 47
Ageing dynamics of a human-capital-specific population: A demographic perspective
Volume 31 - Article 44
Projection of populations by level of educational attainment, age, and sex for 120 countries for 2005-2050
Volume 22 - Article 15
Most recent similar articles in Demographic Research
A multidimensional global migration model for use in cohort-component population projections
Volume 51 - Article 11
| Keywords:
age dependency,
education,
international migration,
migration,
modelling,
population projection,
projections
Are highly educated partners really more gender egalitarian? A couple-level analysis of social class differentials in attitudes and behaviors
Volume 50 - Article 34
| Keywords:
attitudes,
couple analysis,
education,
educational level,
gender,
gender roles,
housework,
social class differentials
The importance of education for understanding variability of dementia onset in the United States
Volume 50 - Article 26
| Keywords:
dementia,
education,
lifespan variability,
modal age,
morbidity compression
Measuring the educational gradient of period fertility in 28 European countries: A new approach based on parity-specific fertility estimates
Volume 49 - Article 34
| Keywords:
education,
Europe,
period fertility,
quantum,
tempo,
total fertility rate (TFR)
Educational reproduction in Sweden: A replication of Skopek and Leopold 2020 using Swedish data
Volume 48 - Article 25
| Keywords:
differential fertility,
education,
prospective models,
reproduction,
social mobility,
Sweden
Cited References: 39
Download to Citation Manager
PubMed
Google Scholar