Intergenerational Effects of Turkiye's Education Reform on Children's Academic and Health Outcomes

Betul Akar () and Cagla Okten ()
Additional contact information
Betul Akar: TUBITAK
Cagla Okten: Bilkent University

No 18735, IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER

Abstract: This paper examines the intergenerational effects of Turkiye’s 1997 compulsory schooling reform, which increased mandatory schooling from five to eight years. Drawing on a novel dataset from the nationally representative 2022 Turkish Child Survey, we use a regression discontinuity design (RDD) to identify the causal effect of mothers’ exposure to the reform. We find that the reform significantly increased maternal educational attainment and, in turn, improved children’s performance in Turkish, while having no statistically significant effect on mathematics achievement. Maternal exposure to the reform also had positive effects on children’s mental health, increasing happiness and reducing anxiety, but did not affect their general health status. These effects are heterogeneous by child gender, with boys benefiting more than girls. Analysis of potential channels shows that increased parental investment may be one relevant channel explaining the observed effects, while reduced child work appears to play a limited role.

Keywords: mother’s education; compulsory schooling; child outcomes; mental health; physical health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I24 J13 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-06
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp18735.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18735

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mark Fallak ().