Heterogeneity in Marginal Non-Monetary Returns to Higher Education

Kamhöfer, Daniel A.; Schmitz, Hendrik; Westphal, Matthias

doi:10.1093/jeea/jvx058

Cited by 46 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…About 32 percent of women had married before their 21st birthday and approximately 8 percent of the sisters' sample is in marriages arranged by their family. Furthermore, there is an average gap of about one year between marriage and first pregnancy, 17 which is consistent with the average age at first pregnancy of 22. Of the sisters who are married, the average husband's age is 31 years and a woman is, on average, about 5 years younger than her husband.…”

Section: Datasupporting

confidence: 75%

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The Educational and Fertility Effects of Sibling Deaths

2018

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An emerging literature finds that childhood exposure to adverse events determines adult outcomes and behavior. We extend this research to understand the influence of witnessing a sibling death as a child on subsequent educational and fertility outcomes in Indonesia. Using panel data and a sibling fixed effects model, we identify this relationship based on variation in the age of surviving children within the same family. Our findings strongly support the importance and persistence of adverse childhood experiences. In particular, for surviving sisters, witnessing a sibling death reduces the years of completed education and the likelihood of completing secondary schooling. The effect on surviving brothers is more muted. A potential channel for this result is that women respond by changing their fertility behavior. While surviving the death of a sibling has little effect on desired fertility levels, we find evidence that surviving sisters start a family about 3-4 years earlier. This suggests that interventions targeted at early-life outcomes may have important ripple effects and that the full impact of health interventions may not be visible until decades afterwards.

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Section: Datasupporting

confidence: 75%

“…Only 3 percent of the women of the 9-17 age range are already married in IFLS 1. We treat them as outliers and are therefore excluded from our effective sample 17. We use the term 'pregnancy' in order to be consistent with the survey question which is on the timing of the pregnancy (not birth).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Educational and Fertility Effects of Sibling Deaths

2018

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“…This is virtually the largest share in variance that can be explained by a linear probability model in this setting. 17 The constant is not significantly different from zero. 18 The estimation I get for the natural birth rate is sensible: one birth every three years.…”

Section: When Polygamy Is Bannedmentioning

confidence: 88%

Strategic Choices in Polygamous Households: Theory and Evidence from Senegal

Rossi

2018

The Review of Economic Studies

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This paper proposes a strategic framework to account for fertility choices in polygamous households. A theoretical model specifies the main drivers of fertility in the African context and describes how the fertility of one wife might impact the behavior of her co-wives. It generates predictions to test for strategic interactions. Exploiting original data from a household survey and the Demographic and Health Surveys in Senegal, empirical tests show that children are strategic complements. One wife raises her fertility in response to an increase by the other wife, because children are the best claim to resources controlled by the husband. This result is the first quantitative evidence of a reproductive rivalry between co-wives. It suggests that the sustained high level of fertility in Africa does not merely reflect women's lack of control over births, as is often argued, but also their incentives to have many children. This paper also contributes to the literature on household behavior as one of the few attempts to open the black box of non-nuclear families.

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“…However, other studies come to different conclusions. Kamhöfer et al (2015) use variation in college availability and student loan regulations in Germany as instruments for higher education but do not find effects on mental health.…”

Section: Accepted Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 97%

Does education protect against depression? Evidence from the Young Finns Study using Mendelian randomization

Viinikainen

Bryson

Böckerman

et al. 2018

Preventive Medicine

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Using participants (N = 1733) drawn from the nationally representative longitudinal Young Finns Study (YFS) we estimate the effect of education on depressive symptoms. In 2007, when the participants were between 30 and 45 years old, they reported their depressive symptoms using a revised version of Beck's Depression Inventory. Education was measured using register information on the highest completed level of education in 2007, which was converted to years of education. To identify a causal relationship between education and depressive symptoms we use an instrumental variables approach (Mendelian randomization, MR) with a genetic risk score as an instrument for years of education. The genetic risk score was based on 74 genetic variants, which were associated with years of education in a genome-wide association study (GWAS). Because the genetic variants are randomly assigned at conception, they induce exogenous variation in years of education and thus identify a causal effect if the assumptions of the MR approach are met. In Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) estimation years of education in 2007 were negatively associated with depressive symptoms in 2007 (b = -0.027, 95% Confidence Interval (CI) = -0.040, -0.015). However, the results based on Mendelian randomization suggested that the effect is not causal (b = 0.017; 95% CI = -0.144, 0.178). This indicates that omitted variables correlated with education and depression may bias the linear regression coefficients and exogenous variation in education caused by differences in genetic make-up does not seem to protect against depressive symptoms.

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Heterogeneity in Marginal Non-Monetary Returns to Higher Education

Cited by 46 publications

References 48 publications

The Educational and Fertility Effects of Sibling Deaths

The Educational and Fertility Effects of Sibling Deaths

Strategic Choices in Polygamous Households: Theory and Evidence from Senegal

Does education protect against depression? Evidence from the Young Finns Study using Mendelian randomization

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