The Effect of Female Education on Fertility and Infant Health: Evidence from School Entry Policies Using Exact Date of Birth

Abstract

This paper uses age-at-school-entry policies to identify the effect of female education on fertility and infant health. We focus on sharp contrasts in schooling, fertility, and infant health between women born just before and after the school entry date. School entry policies affect female education and the quality of a woman's mate and have generally small, but possibly heterogeneous, effects on fertility and infant health. We argue that school entry policies manipulate primarily the education of young women at risk of dropping out of school.

The Effects of Education on Fertility: Evidence From Taiwan

“…Contrary to the negative fertility effect obtained by most studies in the literature, we find that schooling does not have any impact on fertility. These results are consistent with those obtained by more recent studies (e.g., Clark, Geruso, and Royer 2014;McCrary and Royer 2011;Monstad, Propper, and Salvanes 2008).…”

“…Some studies use twins to control for interpersonal differences in unobserved characteristics, for example, Amin and Behrman (2014) use a small sample of twins to find that an extra grade of schooling reduces the number of children by 0.14. Most studies in the literature identify the causal effect through natural experiments (e.g., Aaronson, Lange, and Mazumder 2014;Black, Devereux, and Salvanes 2008;Breierova and Duflo 2004;Clark, Geruso, and Royer 2014;Dinçer, Kaushal, and Grossman 2014;Lavy and Zablotsky 2015;León 2004;McCrary and Royer 2011;Monstad, Propper, and Salvanes 2008;Osili and Long 2008). These studies suggest a negative effect of female education on fertility, with the exception of Monstad, Propper, and Salvanes (2008), McCrary andRoyer (2011), andClark, Geruso, andRoyer (2014).…”

“…There are many studies investigating the relationship between female education and fertility. However, apart from McCrary and Royer (2011) and Clark, Geruso, and Royer (2014), most previous studies use the instrumental variable (IV) approach with either the timing (in years) of changes in policy or program intensity (e.g., teacher-student ratio generated by the law changes) as instruments to identify the effect of education on fertility and it is found that education either suppresses or delays fertility. The differences in McCrary and Royer's (2011) and Clark, Geruso, and Royer's (2014) results from others may arise from the way cohort effects are controlled for.…”

“…Cohort effects may arise from changes in social norms, parental influences, or even health technologies (e.g., advances in health care or contraceptive devices). McCrary and Royer (2011) use the exact birth date and Clark, Geruso, and Royer (2014) use month-year of birth as running variables in a regression discontinuity design (RDD) framework, and their studies are based on individuals born within a narrow window of birth dates. That is, cohort effects are controlled for by a time trend defined by the day of birth or month of birth and by employing individuals who are very similar in their date-of-birth.…”

“…The outcomes of interest in our study are women's fertility. Similar to McCrary and Royer (2011), we use the women's exact birth date to control for cohort effects in an RDD setup. As in the study by Chou et al (2010), we take advantage of a jump in schooling attainment caused by the change in Taiwan's compulsory education law in 1968, which extended compulsory education from 6 to 9 years-a huge 3-year jump.…”