Abstract
AbstractThis article investigates the effect that increasing secondary education opportunities have on teenage fertility in Brazil. Using a novel dataset to exploit variation from a 57 percent increase in secondary schools across 4,884 Brazilian municipalities between 1997 and 2009, the analysis shows an important role of secondary school availability on underage fertility. An increase of one school per 100 females reduces a cohort's teenage birthrate by between 0.250 and 0.563 births per 100, or a reduction of one birth for roughly every 50 to 100 students who enroll in secondary education. The results highlight the important role of access to education leading to spillovers in addition to improving educational attainment.
Highlights
A 2012 report by the World Bank on teenage pregnancy stresses the correlation between teenage childbearing and socioeconomic variables including poverty, inequality, public health expenditure and female labor force participation
Between 1997 and 2009,1 9,402 secondary schools where introduced in Brazilian municipalities (a 57% increase), raising the average school density in municipalities from 1.06 per 100 teenagers to 1.54 per 100 teenagers
This paper investigates whether the negative association between secondary school availability and teenage childbearing is based on a causal relationship
Summary
A 2012 report by the World Bank on teenage pregnancy stresses the correlation between teenage childbearing and socioeconomic variables including poverty, inequality, public health expenditure and female labor force participation. We do this by looking at the effect of a large secondary school expansion across 4,884 Brazilian municipalities on teenage childbearing. Our estimates rely on the assumption that the secondary school expansion is orthogonal to levels and trends in municipal teenage childbearing.
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