The Impact of Education on Family Formation: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from the UK

Abstract

We thank Julie Jefferies and Louise O'Leary for the considerable time and effort that they and their team have devoted to this project. It would not have been possible without the live births dataset that they supplied. We also thank Mary Grinsted for generously supplying the abortion data used in this paper and Kevin Lynch for his help with the Longitudinal Study. We are extremely grateful to Damon Clark for his invaluable input and help in securing the data. Thanks to various seminar participants, Sarah Bana, Jenna Stearns, Cathy Weinberger, and the UCSB Econometrics group for their comments and suggestions. We thank Alexandra Gecker, Chang Lee, and Corey White for excellent research assistance. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Is Education Always Reducing Fertility? Evidence from Compulsory Schooling Reforms

“…Overall, while our findings confirm the hypothesis that education reduces fertility using the 1947 reform in England, we have to reject this hypothesis for Continental Europe. As described in Section 1, Monstad et al (2008), Fort (2009) and Geruso and Royer (2014) found no significant effects of education induced by mandatory schooling in Norway, Italy and the 1972 reform in the UK on total fertility. 19 Leon (2004) found a negative impact of education on fertility of around À0.33 and a small positive effect on childlessness for the US.…”

“…Monstad et al (2008) studied completed fertility and timing of births in Norway, Fort (2009) investigated Italy, Braakmann (2011) and Geruso and Royer (2014) looked at the United Kingdom and Cygan-Rehm and Maeder (2013) examined Germany. Monstad et al (2008), Fort (2009) and Geruso and Royer (2014) find evidence of a postponement of childbearing away from the teenage years but no significant effects on total fertility. 2 Conversely, Braakmann (2011) detects a positive causal effect of education on the number of children and Cygan-Rehm and Maeder (2013) find a negative effect on the number of children and a positive effect on childlessness.…”

Free Primary Education, Fertility, and Women’s Access to the Labor Market: Evidence from Ethiopia

“…This timing, significantly after the completion of primary school, reduces the possibility of an incarceration effect driving the results. A remaining concern is that postponements of early fertility decisions tend to be replaced by additional births at later ages (Black et al, 2008;Geruso and Royer, 2018). However, the reforms in Ethiopia have a greater negative effect on fertility at each subsequent age from 22 through 29; the evidence suggests that the reduction in fertility actually increases as women age.…”

Free Primary Education, Schooling, and Fertility: Evidence from Ethiopia

“…However, a number of other papers in the recent literature find evidence of an initial delay in fertility, but no change in total fertility (Black et al, 2008;Monstad et al, 2008;Fort, 2012;Geruso et al, 2014), and the 3 previously mentioned paper by Fort et al (2016) finds a positive causal relationship between schooling and fertility in continental Europe and a negative relationship in the UK. This literature finds surprisingly mixed results, suggesting the need for a greater understanding of the linkages between schooling and fertility.…”