WOMEN’S EDUCATION AND FERTILITY AND CHILD MORTALITY EVIDENCE FROM VIETNAM 1989, 1999, AND 2009

Abstract

In this thesis, I aim at investigating whether the variation in education both over time and across regions in Vietnam can explain the variation in the Vietnamese fertility and child mortality. Although a number of quantitative studies on the association between fertility and education have been done, there is an absence of a quantitative insight based on the evidence from Vietnam, where fertility, child mortality and education has undergone significant changes. To do so, the thesis uses the female individual-level data from the sample of the Vietnamese Population and Housing Census from the years 1989, 1999, and 2009, provided by IPUMS. In this thesis, fertility measure is based on the number of children the individual has ever born, child mortality is estimated by the number of child death, and education is measured as both levels and years. Using separate cross sectional analysis for each year, the results show that there is indeed an inverse relationship between educational and fertility and in Vietnam. The results also show the vital role of mothers' schooling on child survival. Interestingly, the magnitudes of the influence of mother’s education on both fertility and child death fall over time, possibly suggesting that mother’s education has a stronger relationship with fertility and child survival under the situation when the economy is less developed.