Access to higher education and the likelihood of being married

Seyed M. Karimi and Golnaz Taghvatalab

The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, 2020, vol. 78, issue C, 22-33

Abstract: In this paper, we investigate the potential association of the likelihood of being married with access to higher education at college ages, considering a large-scale higher education expansion program in small and medium-sized counties during the 2000s in Iran. We focus on the country’s two major university systems that were mainly responsible for the expansion. We provide evidence that the expansion in one of the university systems was not significantly correlated with the underlying county-level trends. Matching detailed county-level Iranian university enrollment data to individual-level data from annual household surveys, we show that exposure to a university during college ages had a significant negative association with the likelihood of being married among 28–32-year-old individuals. Specifically, exposure to a university opening in the county of residence at ages 18–22 years was associated with up to a 5.9 percentage point decrease in the likelihood of being married at ages 28–32 years, depending on the university system, one’s gender, and the study period.

Keywords: Access to higher education; University opening; Higher education expansion; Likelihood of being married; Iran. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 I26 I28 J12 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:quaeco:v:78:y:2020:i:c:p:22-33

DOI: 10.1016/j.qref.2020.04.004

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