Dissertation Research: Schooling and Population Growth in Cameroom

在整个发展中国家，受过教育的妇女生育的孩子比未受过教育的妇女少，生育的时间也比未受过教育的妇女晚。 人口现代化理论认为，学校教育本身会导致妇女少生孩子;这个项目表明，相反，在生命过程中的选择过程的累积产生了观察到的相关性。选择既包括有意的选择，也包括人们做出选择的结构背景。 本论文项目涉及一名来自西北大学的人类学学生，研究如何选择进出非洲喀麦隆的一所天主教学校的过程，影响一名妇女生育第一个孩子的生活历史时刻。 该项目将收集人口统计学事件历史，并与一所私立中学的学生和前学生进行开放式生活史访谈。将就子女的社会化和学校选择对父母进行访谈，并将就青春期前女孩对学校、职业和家庭的期望进行访谈。 最后，学生将在学校本身进行参与性观察，以了解学校的社会组织及其对学生感知的机会的影响。 这项研究很重要，因为它将促进我们对影响发展中国家人口增长的关键关系的理解，并有助于培养年轻的社会科学家，提高我们对世界这一重要地区的专业知识。

Throughout the developing world, educated women bear fewer children, and bear them later than do uneducated women. Demographic modernization theory proposes that schooling itself induces women to bear fewer children; this project suggests instead that cumulative processes of selection over the life course produce the observed correlation. Selection includes both intentional choices and the structural contexts in which people make choices. This dissertation project involves an anthropology student from Northwestern University, studying how processes of selection into and out of a Catholic school in Cameroon, Africa, influence the life-historical moment at which a woman bears her first child. The project will collect demographic event histories and conduct open ended life history interviews with students and former students of a private secondary school. The parents will be interviewed about socialization and schooling choices for their children, and preadolescent girls will be interviewed about their aspirations for school, career and family. Finally the student will conduct participant observation at the school itself to understand the social organization of the school and its effect on the student's perceived opportunities. This research is important because it will advance our understanding of a key relationship affecting population growth in the developing world, as well as contribute to the training of young social scientist and advancing our expertise about this important region of the world.