Educating Women Cures Poverty

viewpoint — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 06:15:53 GMT

"For women under the age of 35, average number of births fell annually by more than half."

Thanks to Robert Jensen and Emily Oster for their very informative and useful study. And thanks to Slate for reporting on it.

The number one factor reducing poverty is the education of women and resulting control of the birth rate.

And reducing the number of desperately poor people raises wages even for low skill jobs. This should be a top domestic and foreign policy priority for all labor unions.

TV has an enormous potential to inform. It's great to hear that it's having such an effect in rural India. I hope this study encourages many governments to make a more concentrated use of TV for this purpose.

The Dismal Science

Educating Women Cures Poverty