Preprimary Education Laws and Women’s Gender Attitudes, Empowerment and Reproductive Autonomy in 117 Low- And Middle-Income Countries

Preprimary education is central to the global education agenda, including Sustainable Development Goal 4.2. Despite global momentum in low- and middle-income countries, cross-national evidence on long-term outcomes associated with preprimary education legislation remains limited. Here we applied a matrix-completion approach with subgroup and sensitivity analyses using 495 nationally representative surveys from 1990 to 2024, covering nearly 6.7 million women across 117 countries. Eligibility under the legislation was associated with higher educational enrolment and completion, and with more gender-egalitarian attitudes, more favourable empowerment-related behaviours and greater reproductive autonomy. For example, eligibility was associated with higher female primary-school enrolment (1.21 percentage points (pp); 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.52 to 1.91; P < 0.001) and completion (0.75 pp; 95% CI 0.24 to 1.25; P = 0.004), greater disapproval of wife-beating (1.04 pp; 95% CI 0.53 to 1.56; P < 0.001), greater participation in decisions about husbands’ earnings (3.25 pp; 95% CI 2.50 to 4.00; P < 0.001) and greater ever use of contraception (2.96 pp; 95% CI 2.33 to 3.59; P < 0.001). Eligibility under the legislation was also associated with lower rates of adolescent childbearing (−2.41 pp; 95% CI −2.67 to −2.14; P < 0.001) and child marriage (−0.43 pp; 95% CI −0.71 to −0.15; P = 0.003). These findings provide cross-national evidence directly relevant to ongoing policy discussions surrounding Sustainable Development Goal 4.2 and broader global development agendas, while emphasizing the importance of implementation capacity and equitable system expansion.