There are too many factors for me to take studies like this seriously. For example, what does 'education' mean? Does this word have the same meaning in the cont

There are too many factors for me to take studies like this seriously. For example, what does 'education' mean? Does this word have the same meaning in the context of 17th century Europe? 8th century B.C. Egypt? If we're talking about a certain sort of education received only within the last century or so, I think that should be a pretty big and explicitly stated caveat when spouting "Educating women decreases birth rates." It might be less so that education is the cause, but the social responsibilities that education entails, the role that the educated have in society, etc - that is way different now than it was N years ago. And that's just one example. So many things are just different in the last 300 years from the last 3000 that it's incredibly difficult to attribute a trend to a single cause. It makes more sense to say it's harder to have children for a variety of factors/the calculus is different, rather than assuming for the bulk of history women have been having children because they lack education/rights.