Abstract
The Republic of Kenya implemented its first Free Primary Education program in 1974 for grades 1–4 but the program was suddenly terminated and changed to a cost-sharing system in 1988. The policy change from free primary education to cost-sharing system led to a 1.3-year reduction in the length of female education. Taking this sudden policy change as a quasi-experiment, our paper attempts to identify the long-term impacts of female education on the quality–quantity trade-off. Using the 2014 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey, we investigate the impact of female education on total fertility as well as child quality. Our results show that one additional year of female education reduces total fertility by 0.25 and 0.44 by the ages of 26 and 37 years, respectively, and also increases educational investment in their children. As for the mechanism of these changes, we examine three possible pathways: labor participation, knowledge of contraception, and assortative mating. We found that the women affected by the termination of free education were largely vulnerable and seemed to withdraw from education. Furthermore, their total fertility increased, while the educational quality of their children decreased. Our paper infers that the universal primary education policies implemented in many countries today could serve to both contain rapid increases in population and exert long-lasting effects on subsequent generations.
JEL Classification Codes: I25, I28, O12, J13