The Role of Fertility in Achieving Africa’s Schooling MDGs Early Evidence for sub-Saharan Africa Sarah C. Giroux Parfait M. Eloundou-Enyegue (Cornell University) ABSTRACT In theory, declines in national fertility boost schooling by reducing age- dependency but questions remain about the size and catalysts of this dividend. We address these questions in sub-Saharan Africa by using a detailed framework and decomposition methods. Results about catalysts suggest that –beyond policy-- dividends depend on characteristics of fertility transitions and on changes in employment, economic performance and public commitment to education. Results about the size of Africa’s schooling dividends are mixed. On the one hand, the schooling resource per child grew on average by $73 between 1990 and 2005, with a third of this growth tied to trends in age dependency. Yet despite these nominal gains, Africa lost ground relative to the world partly because age dependency declined even more in other regions. Only after 2105 (the MDG deadline) will Africa begin to narrow its gap vis-à-vis the world average. Also, dividends accrue earlier among countries that already had higher enrollments, suggesting that transitions might initially raise schooling inequality across sub-Saharan countries.