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Mother Schooling, Fertility and Children‟s Education: Evidence from a Natural Experiment (2010)
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BibTeX
@MISC{Lavy10motherschooling,,
author = {Victor Lavy and Er Zablotsky},
title = {Mother Schooling, Fertility and Children‟s Education: Evidence from a Natural Experiment},
year = {2010}
}
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Abstract
We study in this paper the effect of mother‟s education on fertility and the schooling of children. We base our evidence on a natural experiment that increased sharply the education of affected cohorts of girls, but not of boys, as a result of the de facto revocation in October 1963 of the Military Government of Arabs in Israel which immediately eased for large part of the Arab population access to schooling institutions. The Military Government which was in effect from 1948 imposed severe restrictions on movement and travel and therefore disrupted access to schooling of residents in localities that lacked education institutions. The change in access to schools increased female years of schooling by 1.02 for women age 4-8 in 1964 and by 0.58 for women age 9-13 at that time while not effects boys education attainment. These very large effects on schooling levels led to a sharp decline in completed fertility, 0.61 children for the younger affected cohorts and of 0.47 children for the older cohorts. The implied 2SLS estimates show that an increase in one year of maternal schooling caused a decline in fertility of 0.5-0.6 children for the younger cohorts. Additional evidence that we present suggests that labor force participation, age when married, marriage and divorce rates as well as spouse's labor force participation and earnings did not play any role in this fertility decline. However, spouse's education increased sharply as well through assortative matching, therefore playing as well a role in the declining fertility. We also estimate that the increase in mother's schooling led as well to an increase in the education of children. The increase in schooling of children amounted to just over a third of the increase in schooling of their mothers.
Keyphrases
natural experiment mother schooling child education military government labor force participation woman age mother education additional evidence severe restriction fertility decline maternal schooling arab population access education attainment schooling level sharp decline large effect affected cohort education institution divorce rate large part female year assortative matching
