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Full Details

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

Author(s): Margherita Fort, Nicole Schneeweis and Rudolf Winter-Ebmer

Publication Date: October 2011

Keyword(s): education, fertility and instrumental variables

Programme Area(s): Labour Economics

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.

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Bibliographic Reference

Fort, M, Schneeweis, N and Winter-Ebmer, R. 2011. 'More Schooling, More Children: Compulsory Schooling Reforms and Fertility in Europe'. London, Centre for Economic Policy Research. https://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=8609