Working Paper: NBER ID: w19597
Authors: Mehmet Alper Diner; Neeraj Kaushal; Michael Grossman
Abstract: We use the 1997 Education Law in Turkey that increased compulsory formal schooling from five to eight years to study the effect of women's education on a range of outcomes relating to women's fertility, their children's health and measures of empowerment. We apply an instrumental variables methodology and find that a 10 percentage point increase in the proportion of ever married women with eight years of schooling lowered number of pregnancies per woman by 0.13 and number of children per women by 0.11. There is also some evidence of a decline in child mortality, caused by mother's education, but effects turn statistically insignificant in our preferred models. We also find that a 10 percentage point increase in the proportion with eight years of schooling raised the proportion of women using modern family planning methods by eight to nine percent and the proportion of women with knowledge of their ovulation cycle by five to seven percent. However, we find little evidence that schooling changed women's attitudes towards gender equality.
Keywords: Women's Education; Fertility; Child Health; Empowerment; Turkey
JEL Codes: I21; I24; I25; J12; J13; J16
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Women's education (I24) | Fertility rates (J13) |
| Women's education (I24) | Child mortality (J13) |
| Women's education (I24) | Women's empowerment (J16) |
| Women's education (I24) | Use of modern family planning methods (J13) |
| Women's education (I24) | Knowledge of ovulation cycle (C41) |
| Increased age at first marriage (J12) | Fertility rates (J13) |
| Improved contraceptive use (J13) | Fertility rates (J13) |