More Schooling, More Children: Compulsory Schooling Reforms and Fertility in Europe
Quaderni DSE Working Paper No. 787
43 Pages Posted: 23 Sep 2011
There are 3 versions of this paper
More Schooling, More Children: Compulsory Schooling Reforms and Fertility in Europe
More Schooling, More Children: Compulsory Schooling Reforms and Fertility in Europe
More Schooling, More Children: Compulsory Schooling Reforms and Fertility in Europe
Date Written: June 22, 2011
Abstract
We study the relationship between education and fertility, exploiting compulsory schooling reforms in Europe as source of exogenous variation in education. Using data from 8 European countries, we assess the causal effect of education on the number of biological kids and the incidence of childlessness. We find that more education causes a substantial decrease in childlessness and an increase in the average number of children per woman. Our findings are robust to a number of falsification checks and we can provide complementary empirical evidence on the mechanisms leading to these surprising results.
Keywords: Instrumental Variables, Education, Fertility
JEL Classification: I2, J13
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
Education, HIV, and Early Fertility: Experimental Evidence from Kenya
By Esther Duflo, Pascaline Dupas, ...
-
Education, HIV, and Early Fertility: Experimental Evidence from Kenya
By Esther Duflo, Pascaline Dupas, ...
-
Years of Schooling, Human Capital and the Body Mass Index of European Females
By Giorgio Brunello, Daniele Fabbri, ...
-
More Schooling, More Children: Compulsory Schooling Reforms and Fertility in Europe
By Margherita Fort, Nicole E. Schneeweis, ...
-
More Schooling, More Children: Compulsory Schooling Reforms and Fertility in Europe
By Margherita Fort, Nicole E. Schneeweis, ...
-
Childbearing History, Later Life Health, and Mortality in Germany
By Karsten Hank
-
By Vikesh Amin and Jere Behrman
-
Adolescent Fertility in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Effects and Solutions
By Amanda L. Glassman, Rachel Silverman, ...