Education and Fertility: Evidence from a Natural Experiment*

Abstract

Declining fertility is often attributed to the increased education of women. It is difficult to establish a causal link because both fertility and education have changed secularly. In this paper we study the connection between fertility and education using educational reform as an instrument to control for selection. Our results indicate that increasing education leads to postponement of first births away from teenage motherhood and towards women having their first birth in their 20s as well as, for a smaller group, up to the age of 35-40. We find no evidence, however, that more education results in more women remaining childless or having fewer children.

Schooling in adolescence raises IQ scores

“…Each separate municipality was able to introduce the full compulsory schooling reform after local officials submitted a reform plan to a national committee, which, on approval of the plan, provided national funds to finance the creation of the new middle schools and the extension of compulsory schooling. The timing of the reform in different municipalities was therefore not explicitly randomized, but earlier studies of the reform have not been able to uncover strong correlations between observable characteristics of the municipalities and the timing of the reform (15)(16)(17)(18)25). Extensive checks performed as part of our analysis (Results) fail to uncover evidence that implementation of the reform was not exogenous to our outcomes of interest (education/IQ).…”

“…Because the introduction of the reform took place in different municipalities in different years, we are able to use a number of different strategies to account for correlation between individuals living in the same communities as well as for time trends in IQ scores during the relevant period (i.e., the Flynn effect) (14). The quasiexperimental nature of this reform has been previously used to study the effect of education on a number of other outcomes in Norway (15)(16)(17)(18), and similar reforms in other countries have also been extensively used to study the effect of education on earnings (19)(20)(21)(22).…”

Women's schooling and fertility under low female labor force participation: Evidence from mobility restrictions in Israel

“…Also in Norway, Monstad, Propper and Salvanes (2008) find that increases in education did not lead to decreased fertility rates, yet did lead women to give birth at older ages. In contrast, McCrary and Royer (2011), using exact cutoff dates for school entry, find that education does not affect fertility.…”

Do more-schooled women have fewer children and delay childbearing? Evidence from a sample of US twins

“…They find that compelling women to stay in school until age 16 reduced the probability of a teen birth by 4.7 percent in the U.S. and 3.5 percent in Norway. Monstad et al (2008) extend the work of Black et al (2008) for Norway, examining the effect of schooling on the number of children and the probability of being childless in addition to age at first birth, using changes in compulsory schooling laws as their instrument. Their IV estimates indicate no significant effect of schooling on the number of children or the probability of being childless, but they do find that schooling reduces the probability of a teen birth and delays first births into the 20s and late 30s.…”