This is the first study exploring the causal effect of education on teenage fertility in Argentina. We exploit an exogenous variation in education from the staggered implementation of the 1993 reform, which increased compulsory schooling from 7 to 10 years. We find a negative overall impact of education on teenage fertility rates, which operates through two complementing channels: a human capital effect (one additional year of schooling causes a decline of 30 births per 1000 girls) and a weaker 'incapacitation' effect (a rise of one percentage point in enrollment rate reduces 3 births per 1000 girls).

El programa 'Patria Grande' en Argentina otorgó a los inmigrantes indocumentados un certificado de residencia precaria, con el que pueden trabajar, estudiar, entrar y salir del país libremente. Esto podría estimular una mayor participación en el sector formal y un mayor acceso a servicios sociales respecto del que hubiese surgido en ausencia del programa. Estimamos estos efectos comparando en el tiempo a los inmigrantes elegibles con un grupo semejante pero no elegible (migrantes argentinos, que se mudaron recientemente de ciudad). Los resultados sugieren que el programa contribuyó a disminuir 13% la informalidad (vía un aumento en la probabilidad de tener derecho a jubilación y seguro de salud en el trabajo) y mejoró 7.5% el acceso a educación de los inmigrantes.

The Latin American and Caribbean adolescent fertility rates are among the highest in the world: about . million children are born to teen mothers every year, and most of them are declared unintended pregnancies. The region also has the highest rate of unintended pregnancy of any world region, and nearly half of such pregnancies end in abortion. However, fewer than  percent of the region's women live in countries where abortion is broadly legal. This paper estimates the causal effect of abortion legalization on adolescent fertility in Uruguay using official data on legal abortions provided after the  reform. We employed a difference-in-differences strategy, classifying states by whether they are responsive or unresponsive to the reform. The results suggest that abortion reform had a negative impact on the adolescent birth rate by .-. births per thousand adolescents aged - (a  percent decrease from the preintervention average). Additionally, we exploited variation in reform implementation intensity through the estimation of fixed-effect linear regression models and found consistent results. Our findings are robust to controlling for a concurrent large-scale program of contraceptive implants. We conclude that legislation aimed at enhancing rights and reducing avoidable deaths and complications from unsafe abortions may also have spillover effects that help reduce adolescent fertility.