Human capital formation, fertility, and labor force participation in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

My dissertation comprises three chapters. The first chapter examines the effect of childhood immunization. After being in power in Burkina Faso for about a year, a military regime led by Thomas Sankara-within weeks, vaccinated 77% of children between ages one and six against measles, meningitis, and yellow fever. The coverage and the success of this program set it apart from other contemporary vaccination programs, hence providing a policy experiment to test the effects of large immunization programs in the contexts of developing economies. We estimate the impact of increased vaccination on child mortality, primary school outcomes, and adulthood labor market participation.

The second chapter examines the effect of polygamy on fertility; polygamy incidence in Sub-Saharan Africa is the highest in the world. While the relation between polygamy and fertility is well documented, the direction of the causality is still de bated. In this paper, I combine census data from five African countries, to test the effect of polygamy on fertility. I exploit the observation that marriages occur within ethnic groups and differences in ethnic populations across regions to construct a novel instrument that allows me to identify the effect of the polygamous union on fertility.

The third chapter examines the role of ethnicity in labor participation in Africa. Does the president’s ethnicity favor the youth’s formal labor participation in Sub Saharan Africa? The theory shows no definite conclusion, and analysis from eleven Sub-Saharan African regions substantiate the theory.