Schooling enables women to control fertility and pursue socioeconomic advancement

Evidence

In one carefully done study, demographer of religion Michael Blume examined the meticulously recorded Swiss census of 2000, based on almost 7 million respondents. He found that, even after matching respondents on education and income, Christians, Hindus, Muslims, and Jews outbreed the religiously nonaffiliated. The gap in fertility varied, ranging from 50 percent to more than double. But it’s not just that religious people have more children than the nonreligious. Religiously nonaffiliated Swiss women are having children at below replacement levels, whereas most religiously affiliated Swiss women are at above replacement. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 494 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Learning was now to be separated from the practices in which it was entwined, assigning it a distinct place, the school, and a distinct period of life, that of youth. ‘L’instruction publique’ (al-tarbiya al-umumiyya in Arabic) was the novel phrase for this practice. It referred, it was said, to ‘that which is studied by boys and girls in schools and colleges and in all establishments where a specific number of people are brought together for instruction’. Schooling was to be an autonomous field, defined not by its subject or method, but as an activity that took place in a specialised location, among a specific group of people of a particular age. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 301 (#complicates, via linked claim)

The statistical associa­ tion (coefficient of correlation) between parents’ social status and years of education attained by individuals who completed their schooling three or four decades ago is virtually identical to the same correlation for individu­ als who terminated their schooling in recent years. On balance, the available data suggest that the number of years of school attained by a child depends upon family background as much in the recent period as it did fifty years ago. — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 438 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Entry into production and reproductive freedom drive women’s political emancipation — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 276; Banning gender inequality educates women better than fertility campaigns grow economies; Schooling enables fertility control through self-efficacy belief, not just knowledge. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2889 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Religious affiliation raises fertility even after controlling for education and income #complicates (0.78) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 494
• Schooling as an autonomous age-based institution is a recent European colonial invention #complicates (0.76) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 301
• Schooling attainment depends on family background as much today as fifty years ago #complicates (0.75) — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 438
• Fear of demographic change targets women’s reproductive bodies #complicates (0.74) — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 529