More Schooling, More Children: Compulsory Schooling Reforms and Fertility in Europe

Margherita Fort, Nicole Schneeweis and Rudolf Winter-Ebmer

No 2011-11, NRN working papers from The Austrian Center for Labor Economics and the Analysis of the Welfare State, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria

Abstract: We study the relationship between education and fertility, exploiting compulsory schooling reforms in Europe as source of exogenous variation in education. Using data from 8 European countries, we assess the causal effect of education on the number of biological kids and the incidence of childlessness. We find that more education causes a substantial decrease in childlessness and an increase in the average number of children per woman. Our findings are robust to a number of falsification checks and we can provide complementary empirical evidence on the mechanisms leading to these surprising results.

Keywords: Instrumental Variables; Education; Fertility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I2 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2011-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-lab
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (47)

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Related works:
Working Paper: More Schooling, More Children: Compulsory Schooling Reforms and Fertility in Europe (2011)
Working Paper: More Schooling, More Children: Compulsory Schooling Reforms and Fertility in Europe (2011)
Working Paper: More Schooling, More Children: Compulsory Schooling Reforms and Fertility in Europe (2011)
Working Paper: More Schooling, More Children: Compulsory Schooling Reforms and Fertility in Europe (2011)
Working Paper: More Schooling, More Children: Compulsory Schooling Reforms and Fertility in Europe (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jku:nrnwps:2011_11

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