Does Education Reduce Teen Fertility? Evidence from Compulsory Schooling Laws

Publication date: Available online 22 November 2019Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Philip DeCicca, Harry KrashinskyAbstractWhile less-educated women are more likely to give birth as teenagers, there is scant evidence the relationship is causal. We investigate this possibility using variation in compulsory schooling laws (CSLs) to identify the impact of formal education on teen fertility at specific ages for a large sample of women drawn from multiple waves of the Canadian Census. We find large negative impacts of education on births for young women aged seventeen and eighteen, but less systematic evidence of an effect after these ages. While our findings are consistent with an “incarceration effect”, where school enrollment deters fertility in a contemporaneous manner, we cannot rule out longer-run effects of education on fertility.
Source: Journal of Health Economics - Category: Health Management Source Type: research