This research study provides some insights into methodological issues in modeling fertility and its proximate determinants. The aim is to examine the links between female schooling and fertility in the Ivory Coast. The article first presents a brief literature review on the effect of education on fertility, describes the data and choice of econometric models, and indicates in a reduced form model the estimates of the impact of education and other socioeconomic factors on age at cohabitation and duration of breast feeding. Data are obtained from the 1986 Cote d'Ivoire Living Standards Survey among women aged 16 years or older. A probit model is used to estimate the probability of a woman having given birth at least once. The Kaplan-Meier hazard rate (Meyer's method) is used to explain women's age at cohabitation as a function of her education, personal characteristics, and local factors such as wage rates an social service infrastructure. Duration of breast feeding is explained by household characteristics as well as cohabitation explanatory variables among a subsample of women with at least one birth. Findings from the age at cohabitation models indicate that results varied with choice of the hazard models. Controls for unobserved heterogeneity were important for estimating the effects of secondary education. Econometric techniques that captured the heaping in duration of breast feeding data did not improve the fit. Both breast feeding and education were endogenous to fertility. This means that women with more children tended to marry later and breast feed longer. Findings indicate that primary schooling had a weak impact on fertility and proximate determinants. Secondary schooling had a strong impact. Women with secondary schooling cohabited 4 years later and breast fed 8 months less than non-schooled women.

中文翻译：

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女性教育如何影响生育能力？科特迪瓦的结构模型。

这项研究为在模拟生育力及其近​​因方面的方法论问题提供了一些见识。目的是研究象牙海岸女性受教育程度与生育率之间的联系。本文首先介绍了有关教育对生育力影响的简要文献综述，描述了计量经济模型的数据和选择，并以简化形式指出了教育和其他社会经济因素对同居年龄和生育时间的影响的估计值。母乳喂养。数据来自1986年科特迪瓦16岁以上妇女的生活水平调查。概率模型用于估计妇女至少分娩一次的概率。Kaplan-Meier危险率（Meyer方法）用于解释女性 的同居年龄取决于其教育程度，个人特征和当地因素（例如工资水平和社会服务基础设施）。母乳喂养的持续时间可以通过家庭特征以及至少一个生育妇女的子样本中的同居解释变量来解释。在同居模型中从年龄得出的结果表明，结果随危害模型的选择而变化。未观察到的异质性的控制对于评估中学教育的效果很重要。捕获母乳喂养数据持续增长的计量经济学技术并不能改善拟合度。母乳喂养和教育都是生育的内生因素。这意味着育有更多孩子的妇女往往结婚较晚，哺乳期更长。研究结果表明，小学教育对生育率和决定因素的影响很小。中学教育产生了很大的影响。接受过中学教育的妇女在4年后同居，与未接受教育的妇女相比，母乳喂养少了8个月。