Women’s education and reproductive health have come to be seen in recent years as the most effective channels for influencing fertility. In Sections 4-5 I provide an outline of the theoretical and empirical reasons why they are so seen. It is an interesting analytical feature of education and reproductive health that they can be studiedwithin a frameworkwhere households make decisions in isolation of other households. So, the theory of demand for education and reproductive health can be made to be a branch of the "new household economics", which has been much engaged in the study of households deciding without concern of what other households do. 4 But theoretical considerations.
