This paper investigates the potential consequences of falling fertility on the reproduction of social inequalities over time. We develop a framework to understand how the fertility decline should interfere on the intergenerational transmission of disadvantages and apply it in the context of Ouagadougou, the capital city of Burkina Faso. We use data from the Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) of Ouagadougou, which collected retrospective data over three generations (grandmothers, mothers and children). We then use structural equation modeling (SEM) to estimate the models, and finally we conduct a sensitivity analysis to assess the consistency of our results. The results confirm that family size decline has a significant leverage on the intergenerational transmission of educational disadvantages. First, family size of mothers is significantly patterned by their grandmother’s characteristics, particularly education and socioeconomic status (SES). Second, mothers with reduced family size appear to invest more in the education of their children, which should enable them to maintain their educational advantages across generations with respect to poorer and non-educated families. These results remain robust after testing alternative assumptions about SES of grandmothers. Moreover, the findings also confirm that the relationship between educational investment and family size is changing over the course of socioeconomic development. While for recent generations (mothers and children) this relationship is strongly negative, for older generations (grandmothers and mothers) it is weak, albeit positive and statistically significant. This suggests that the meaning of the quantity of children and their participation in the labor force is shifting across generations in Ouagadougou, as in most urban areas in Africa.

中文翻译：

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非洲城市家庭规模下降背景下教育劣势的代际传递

本文研究了生育率下降对社会不平等再生产的潜在后果。我们开发了一个框架来理解生育率下降应该如何干扰劣势的代际传递，并将其应用于布基纳法索首都瓦加杜古的背景下。我们使用来自瓦加杜古健康和人口监测系统 (HDSS) 的数据，该系统收集了三代人（祖母、母亲和儿童）的回顾性数据。然后我们使用结构方程模型 (SEM) 来估计模型，最后我们进行敏感性分析以评估结果的一致性。结果证实，家庭规模下降对教育劣势的代际传递具有显着影响。第一的，母亲的家庭规模很大程度上受其祖母的特征影响，尤其是教育和社会经济地位 (SES)。其次，家庭规模缩小的母亲似乎会更多地投资于子女的教育，这应该使她们能够相对于贫困和未受过教育的家庭保持世代相传的教育优势。在测试了关于祖母的社会经济地位的替代假设后，这些结果仍然稳健。此外，研究结果还证实，教育投资与家庭规模之间的关系在社会经济发展过程中正在发生变化。虽然对于最近几代人（母亲和孩子）来说，这种关系是强烈的负面关系，但对于老几代人（祖母和母亲）来说，这种关系很弱，尽管是积极的并且具有统计意义。