The effect of education on fertility: Evidence from a compulsory schooling reform

Kamila Cygan-Rehm and Miriam Maeder

Labour Economics, 2013, vol. 25, issue C, 35-48

Abstract: This paper investigates the effect of education on fertility under inflexible labor market conditions. We exploit exogenous variation from a German compulsory schooling reform to deal with the endogeneity of education. By using data from two complementary datasets, we examine different fertility outcomes over the life cycle. In contrast to evidence for other developed countries, we find that increased education causally reduces completed fertility. This negative effect operates through a postponement of first births away from teenage years and no catch-up later in life. We attribute these findings to the particularly high opportunity costs of childrearing in Germany.

Keywords: Fertility; Education; Childlessness; Timing of births; Educational reform (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (127)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927537113000584
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: The Effect of Education on Fertility: Evidence from a Compulsory Schooling Reform (2012)
Working Paper: The Effect of Education on Fertility: Evidence from a Compulsory Schooling Reform (2012)
Working Paper: The Effect of Education on Fertility: Evidence from a Compulsory Schooling Reform (2012)
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:eee:labeco:v:25:y:2013:i:c:p:35-48

DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2013.04.015

Access Statistics for this article

Labour Economics is currently edited by A. Ichino

More articles in Labour Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().