6 percentage points more likely to have had a child. This represents an increase of 22% compared to the control group (statistically significant at the 5% level). Women assigned to the training in Togo were 14 percentage points more likely to have had a child posttreatment, statistically significant at the 5% level. This implies that women assigned to treatment were twice as likely to have a child under five post-treatment than control women. The impact of WALN is not statistically different from zero in either period. In Rwanda, we find a null effect similar to the null effect obtained with the continuous outcome.

# **5 Mechanisms**

We now turn to exploring the mechanisms behind the observed increases in fertility.

In contexts with no public pension system and limited public healthcare, coupled with the absence of inheritance rights for widows, women face a heightened risk of destitution upon the loss a spouse and in old age in general. This risk is particularly acute in SSA where the age gap between partners is the largest globally with an average of 8.6 years (Pew Research Center, 2019) and where women have a higher life expectancy by about 4 years (World Bank Development Indicators, 2021). The realization of the widowhood risk being near certain, women need to anticipate the economic consequences of it and develop mitigating strategies.

They may make two types of investment that function as informal pension schemes. First, they may invest in children—in either their quantity or quality—with the expectation that their offspring will contribute to their future income. Women may invest in children’s education and health, expecting that children will share their human capital returns on the labor or marriage market (Bau, 2021; Stark and Lucas, 1988). In a context characterized by low perceived returns to education (Nguyen, 2008), and children’s imperfect commitment to repay women’s investment in the future, women cannot entirely substitute quantity with quality. Women thus target a specific number of children to make sure that the likelihood of child neglect, poverty, migration is lower than the level of destitution risk that she is accepting to take (Ray, 1998).

Secondly, women may invest in assets. Ownership of household land and property in old age could offer women both housing security and potential sources of income. However, in contexts where women’s property rights are scarce and less secure, and widows are deprived of inheritance rights, women may need to develop strategies to guarantee their access to their husband’s property upon their death. In patrilineal settings, women need to strategically increase their fertility to have one or more sons, as sons will be entitled to inherit their father’s land. Indeed, a wide range of existing research has found having sons attenuates the risk of being dispossessed (e.g., Cain, 1986; Agarwal, 1994; Carranza, 2012; Owen, 2001; Asiimwe, 2009).

In light of these patterns, the fertility responses to the business training and to the land titling programs can be understood as an increase in women’s investment in their pension portfolios. As women’s earnings rise, they gain the financial capacity to support an additional child, who could potentially provide support in the future or secure access to household assets down the line. The formalization of household land induces an increase in the overall value of household assets by strengthening tenure security. Depending on the context, women can either directly increase their property by obtaining a land title in their own 19