Abstract
We leverage a randomized field experiment in Ethiopia to examine how female wage work opportunities
affect the fertility of married women. The experiment, set up in collaboration with 27 large companies,
randomly assigned factory worker jobs to equally qualified female applicants. The women who were offered
jobs experienced significant increases in income and share of household earnings (Kotsadam and Villanger
2022; Aalen et al. 2023). The baseline survey was collected in 2016 on a sample of 1463 women. Five
follow-up surveys were then collected around 6, 12, 18, and 34 months (Waves 2-5) after baseline and 4
years after baseline respectively (Wave 6). We are now planning a seventh survey round in 2024, i.e. 8 years
post-baseline.
The long lapse of time since women in the treatment group were randomly offered the jobs will allow us
to track the comprehensive impacts of the jobs on women’s fertility histories over a period covering a large
share of their prime childbearing years. At baseline, women in this sample were on average 25 years old,
with two-thirds of them having already given birth at least once.
In the new data collection we will include a detailed fertility module and we will invest heavily in
tracking to try to reduce attrition. In particular, we will use previously collected contact information of
family members of the interviewee, information from neighbours, and we will complement the in person
interviews with phone interviews for the women that are unable to meet us.