It does not seem that female emancipation was the primary cause of the fertility decline, although Caldwell details the many ways in which it amplifies the existing trend once established. It has long been noted by charitable organizations in poor countries that when resources are distributed directly to women, they are more likely to be spent on children’s needs, and when distributed to men, more likely to be spent on the men’s status and drug needs. Education and control of finances by women embrace and amplify the new flow of resources from parents to children, rather than children to parents. Educated children are expensive and demanding children, and an educated wife makes them more so. Higher education and labor force participation by women limits the time available for child bearing and rearing, especially during the more fertile periods of women’s lives.
Caldwell reports that the transition in Ghana was underway in the 1960s, and in many cases families had both children who had been to school and children who had not. Children who had been to school were treated drastically differently from their “illiterate siblings,” though they were often oblivious to this fact. That the transformation could be observed at this level—the treatment of children within the same family—suggests that changes in the status of children (expected to play, to devote time to studies, to be dependent on their parents) precede and underlie changes in gender roles.
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