 From high school to the high chair: Education and fertility timingJonathan James and Sunčica Vujić () Economics of Education Review, 2019, vol. 69, issue C, 1-24 Abstract: We exploit an expansion of post-compulsory schooling that occurred from the late 1980s to the early 1990s to investigate the effect of education on the timing of fertility in England and Wales. We do not find a significant effect on the probability of having a child as a teenager but instead find that the variation in education led to delays in childbearing. Our estimates suggest that an increase in education by one year led to a 5.3% increase in probability of first birth aged 24 or above, 9.4% increase in probability of first birth aged 27 or above, and 13.3% increase in probability of first birth aged 30 or above. The mechanisms driving these findings are not due to an incapacitation effect – by keeping young people in school or university they have less time or opportunity to have a child – but due to a combination of human capital and signalling effects. Keywords: Education; Fertility timing (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:69:y:2019:i:c:p:1-24 DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2018.12.002 Access Statistics for this article Economics of Education Review is currently edited by E. Cohn More articles in Economics of Education Review from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.