Improvements in schooling opportunities and teen births

Lucas N. Garcez, María Padilla-Romo, Cecilia Peluffo and Mayra Pineda-Torres

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2025, vol. 236, issue C

Abstract: We study the causal relationship between educational attainment and teenage birth rates by focusing on a large-scale, country-wide reform that made high school compulsory and removed previously existing school capacity constraints in Mexico. Relying on administrative data on schools and births, we implement a difference-in-differences strategy that exploits variation across time and municipality-level exposure to the reform to explore the effects of expanding educational opportunities on teenage fertility. We find that teenage birth rates decreased by 2.8 percent after the education reform in municipalities with high increases in high school availability relative to municipalities with low increases. Our findings suggest that this decline is not driven by a reduction in the time teenagers had to engage in risky behaviors.

Keywords: Education reform; Teenage birth rate; Human capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I21 I28 J13 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:236:y:2025:i:c:s0167268125002392

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107120

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