Eve’s Reviews > Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on The Decision Not To Have Kids > Status Update

"Interestingly, women with the most education are the ones having the fewest children, although even basic literacy has a negative effect on birthrates in the developing world - the higher the literacy rate, the lower the birthrate. In other words, when women acquire critical skills and start weighing their options, they soon wise up to the fact that they're not getting enough recompense for their labors. In trade union terms, you'd call it a production slowdown." - Laura Kipnis

it's interesting that Kipnis is framing that as basically "women without literacy lack critical thinking skills" i.e are too stupid to know having children will disadvantage them. There's no evidence for that conclusion. It may be that even basic literacy allows women to have more chance of gaining paid employment, therefore they are more freedom to choose not to enter a het relationship, or to hold more power within a het relationship, and have a corresponding amount of control over conception.

Emma Sea wrote: "It may be that even basic literacy allows women to have more chance of gaining paid employment,"

Yeah, true, and I think probably far more likely.