The impact of fertility on child education in rural Thailand

Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate the influence of fertility on child educational attainment. Fertility was measured from the number of children born to the child's mother. Child educational attainment was measured by the number of years of schooling which the child had completed by 1994. The research site was in Nang Rong, Buriram Province. The longitudinal data of Nang Rong between 1984 and 1994 were employed for the data analysis. The unit of analysis was children who were 7-13 years old in 1984. There were 5,438 cases. The results revealed that fertility had an inverse association with child educational attainment, even though, it could explain child educational attainment slightly. Rather, the socioeconomic context variables of the children's family such as production and business resources played more important role on child education than fertility did. Regarding control variables, boys and children who were younger age had higher educational attainment than girls and those who were older did. In addition, mother's education also affected child education. Children whose mother's education was 4 years or higher were more likely to have higher education than those whose mother's education was lower than 4 years were.