Back to Annual Meeting

Back to Annual Meeting

APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Sidney Ruth Schuler, Dr, Empowerment of Women Research Program, Academy for Educational Development, 1875 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20009, 202-884-8081, sschuler@aed.org, Lisa M. Bates, ScD, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Fl., 722 West 168th Street, New York, NY 10032, Joanna Maselko, ScD, Department of Epidemiology of Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115, and Geeta Nanda, DrPH, Center for Health Policy and Capacity Development, Academy for Educational Development (AED), 1875 Connecticut Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20009.

In traditional settings where early marriage and childbearing among adolescent girls persist, decisions about age at marriage are often made by parents, and mothers-in-law tend to have considerable influence in hastening the initiation of childbearing. This study uses Cox proportional hazard models to analyze data from a 2002 survey in six Bangladeshi villages, testing the hypothesis that daughters of women with more education marry later and daughters-in-law of more educated women begin childbearing later. It then explores whether the relationship between female education in one generation and delayed marriage and childbearing in the next is mediated by the empowerment of the senior woman and by more proximate factors: daughter's education and daughter-in-law's age at marriage. As hypothesized, we found a robust association between women's education and the timing of both marriage and childbearing initiation in the next generation. Empowerment of mothers and mothers-in-law did not appear to mediate these relationships. Girls' own education did mediate the association between mothers' education and daughters' ages at marriage. Later childbearing among DILs of educated women appeared to reflect both later age at marriage and delayed childbearing after marriage.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe several possible mechanisms through which female education in one generation may influence the timing of marriage and childbearing in the next.
• Explain how an observed association between maternal education and later marriage of daughters may reflect a pattern of “assortive mating”.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered