 Women's education, marriage, and fertility outcomes: Evidence from Thailand's compulsory schooling lawPasita Chaijaroen and Pallavi Panda Economics of Education Review, 2023, vol. 96, issue C Abstract: Increased education affects market and non-market outcomes. This paper investigates the causal impact of the extension of compulsory education from 6 to 9 years on females’ education, marriage, and fertility outcomes in Thailand. Using data from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) and a donut-hole Regression Discontinuity (RD) design, we show that the new law increases lower secondary school completion in girls, leading to decreased probabilities of giving birth in the school-age years (14–17 years). The policy primarily affects the marginal child leading to the postponement of the timing of their fertility to after-school years. We also document heterogeneity and show that the fertility effects are stronger for Muslim women. The policy leads to a consistent drop in the probability of marriage and cumulative births for Muslim women, which sustain beyond the completion of schooling years. The results hold with alternative empirical model specifications and falsification tests. Keywords: Compulsory schooling; Education; Marriage; Fertility; Thailand; Social norms (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:96:y:2023:i:c:s0272775723000870 DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2023.102440 Access Statistics for this article Economics of Education Review is currently edited by E. Cohn More articles in Economics of Education Review from Elsevier |
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