Strategic Fertility, Education Choices, and Conflicts in Deeply Divided Societies

Abstract Fertility becomes a strategic choice for minorities when having a larger share of the population helps to increase power. If parents invest resources to educate their children, then raising fertility for strategic reasons might be at the cost of future human capital. We dispel this view using census data from several developing countries. We show that religious and ethnic minorities in Indonesia, China, and Malaysia tend to invest more in both education and fertility compared to larger groups. Solving for the Nash equilibrium of an appropriation game between two groups with education and fertility being prescribed as group-specific behavioral norms, we offer a rationale for the observed patterns provided that human capital is an important input to appropriation.