Conception Timing: The Unintended Consequences of Compulsory Education Law

Abstract

Many parents consider school entry age a critical early investment in human capital. Utilizing China’s 1986 Compulsory Education Law as a quasi-natural experiment and employing a difference-in-differences methodology, this study finds that strict school entry cutoff regulations prompt parents with higher socioeconomic status to adjust their conception timing. This ensures that their children are born before the entry cutoff date and can start school earlier, which in turn may result in educational inequality. The heterogeneous parental response invalidates the assumption that birth months around the cutoff date are random.

Keywords: Conception timing, School entry regulation, Compulsory education law