The Impact of the Length of Schooling on the Timing of Family Formation

Josefine Koebe and Jan Marcus

No 1896, Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin from DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research

Abstract: Individuals typically traverse several life phases before forming a family. We analyse whether changing the duration of one of these phases, the education phase, affects the timing of marriage and childbearing. For this purpose, we exploit the introduction of short school years in Germany in 1966-67, which compressed the education phase without affecting the curriculum. Based on difference-in-differences regressions and German Micro Census data, we find that earlier graduation due to short school year exposure affects the timing of marriage for individuals in all secondary school tracks and shifts forward the birth of the first child mainly for academic-track graduates. This highlights that education policies might not only affect family formation through human capital accumulation, but also through changing the duration of earlier life phases. This is important as not only age at marriage and first birth increases in many countries, but also the duration of the education phase.

Keywords: family formation; instruction time; fertility; marriage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I26 J12 J13 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 59 p.
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-edu and nep-eur
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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