Do More-Schooled Women have Fewer Children and Delay Childbearing? Evidence from a Sample of U.S. Twins

Vikesh Amin and Jere Behrman

PIER Working Paper Archive from Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania

Abstract: Using data on MZ (monozygotic, identical) female twins from the Minnesota Twin Registry, we estimate the causal effect of schooling on completed fertility, probability of being childless and age at first birth, using the within-MZ twins methodology. We find strong cross-sectional associations between schooling and the fertility outcomes and some evidence that more schooling causes women to have fewer children and delay childbearing, though not to the extent that interpreting cross-sectional associations as causal would imply. Our conclusions are robust when taking account of (1) endogenous within-twin pair schooling differences due to reverse causality and (2) measurement error in schooling. We also investigate possible mechanisms and find that the effect of women’s schooling on completed fertility is not mediated through husband’s schooling but rather through age at first marriage.

Keywords: twins; twins fixed-effects; schooling; fertility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I2 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2011-12-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-lab and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Journal Article: Do more-schooled women have fewer children and delay childbearing? Evidence from a sample of US twins (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pen:papers:11-041

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