Women’s agency and fertility in Egypt

该项目的目标是为埃及妇女机构与生育率之间的关系提供证据。埃及是中东和北非(MENA)人口最多的国家，在该地区，强大的父权规范和普遍较低的妇女机构水平占上风。在这种背景下，生育率对妇女的社会地位非常重要，而为人母几乎是普遍的。基于生命历程的观点，我们提出了两个研究问题：(1)埃及妇女的生育意愿和生育数量是否会受到影响？(2)在埃及，母亲或后续生育是否会影响妇女的生育能力？在这两个研究问题上，没有纵向研究提供因果证据。虽然在南亚和撒哈拉以南非洲对第一个问题进行了许多横断面研究，但在中东和北非地区进行的研究很少。在世界所有地区，对生育如何影响妇女机构这一反面效应的认识存在相当大的差距。拟议的研究将应用一些方法，允许在比以前的研究更弱的假设下确定因果效应。将使用埃及劳动力市场小组调查(ELMPS)、埃及青年协调调查(HSYPE)以及人口和健康调查(DHS)的数据。对妇女机构的研究很重要，因为它是妇女及其子女的健康和福祉以及社会发展的相关预测指标。一些学者认为，增加妇女机构是降低生育率的一种策略。因此，了解机构和生育率如何相互影响可能对埃及特别重要，因为埃及的生育率最近有所上升。预期的结果预计将大大增加科学和公众的讨论。

The goal of this project is to provide evidence on the relationship between women’s agency and fertility in Egypt. Egypt is the most populous country in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), a region where strong patriarchal norms and generally low levels of women’s agency prevail. In this context, fertility is very important for women’s social position, and motherhood is almost universal. Based on a life course perspective, which considers women’s agency and fertility as sequentially linked, we pose two research questions: (1) Does women’s agency affect their fertility desires and number of children in Egypt? (2) Do motherhood or subsequent births affect women’s agency in Egypt? There are no longitudinal studies that provide causal evidence on these two research questions. While there exist many cross-sectional studies on the first question in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, very few studies were conducted in the MENA region. Across all world regions, there is a considerable gap of knowledge on the reverse effect, how fertility affects women’s agency. The proposed research will apply methods that allow to identify causal effects under weaker assumptions than in previous studies. Data from the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey (ELMPS), the Harmonized Survey of Young People in Egypt (HSYPE), and the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) will be used. Research on women’s agency is important, as it is a relevant predictor of women’s and their children’s health and well-being as well as of societal development. Some scholars consider increasing women’s agency as a strategy to lower fertility. Therefore, knowledge of how agency and fertility influence each other may be particularly relevant for Egypt, where fertility recently increased. The anticipated results are expected to add substantially to both scientific and public discussions.