Books or babies? Incapacitation and human capital effects of extended compulsory schooling on the teenage fertility of ethnic minority women

Anna Adamecz-Völgyi and Ágota Scharle
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Anna Adamecz-Völgyi: University College London and Budapest Institute for Policy Analysis

No 19-01, DoQSS Working Papers from Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London

Abstract: This paper examines the effects of an increase in the compulsory school-leaving (CSL) age on the teenage fertility of Roma women, a disadvantaged ethnic minority in Hungary. We use a regression discontinuity design (RDD) identification strategy and show that raising the CSL age from 16 to 18 decreased the probability of teenage motherhood among Roma women by 6.8 percentage points and delayed early motherhood by two years. We contribute to the literature by exploiting a database that covers live births, miscarriages, abortions, and still births, and contains information on the time of conception precise to the week to separate the incapacitation and human capital effects of education on fertility. We find that higher CSL age decreases the probability of getting pregnant during the school year but not during summer and Christmas breaks, which suggests that the estimated effects are generated mostly through the incapacitation channel.

Keywords: education; compulsory school leaving age; teenage fertility; disadvantaged ethnic minorities; regression discontinuity design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 I26 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-02-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
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