Should I Go to Graduate School? The Role of Preference for Children and Human Capital Accumulation

Sébastien Buttet and Alice Schoonbroodt

Journal of Human Capital, 2022, vol. 16, issue 3, 333 - 371

Abstract: We propose a selection mechanism with preference heterogeneity to study the impact of children on women’s decision to attend graduate school. We show that the net return to education decreases with women’s preferences for children and that only women with preferences below a certain threshold find it optimal to go to graduate school. We embed the selection mechanism into a dynamic life-cycle model of schooling, fertility, and labor force participation decisions and find that changes in returns to experience are quantitatively relevant to account for the observed changes in behavior of women born in 1945 or 1965.

Date: 2022
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