Does Education Empower Women? Evidence from Indonesia

This paper examines whether education empowers women. We exploit an exogenous variation in education induced by a longer school year in Indonesia in 1978, which fits a fuzzy regression discontinuity design. We find education reduces the number of live births, increases contraceptive use, and promotes reproductive health practices. However, except for a few outcome measures, we do not find evidence that education improves women's decision making authority within households, asset ownership, or community participation. These results suggest that, to some extent, education does empower women in middle-income countries like Indonesia.