Compulsory Education Reform, Family Barriers and Female Labour Supply in Turkey: Regression Discontinuity Design with Heterogeneous Treatment Effects

Abstract

This study investigates heterogeneous treatment effects of compulsory education reform in Turkey on demand for education and labour supply decisions across gender groups and family status using a Regression Discontinuity Design. Although increasing the compulsory schooling years has successfully narrowed the gender gap in labour supply, we find that this effect was only through higher labor force participation of single women and women without children. In other words, our results signify that marriage and fertility have shadowed the human capital effect of higher education. Therefore, policymakers should mainly focus on supply-side policies to mitigate family barriers to raise female labour force participation in Turkey. JEL Classification: J12, J13, J22, J24