Staying in the Classroom and Out of the Maternity Ward? The Effect of Compulsory Schooling Laws on Teenage Births

Abstract

This article investigates whether increasing mandatory educational attainment through compulsory schooling legislation encourages women to delay childbearing. We use variation induced by changes in compulsory schooling laws in both the US and Norway to estimate the effect in two very different institutional environments. We find evidence that increased compulsory schooling does in fact reduce the incidence of teenage childbearing in both the US and Norway, and these estimates are quite robust to various specification checks. These results suggest that legislation aimed at improving educational outcomes may have spillover effects onto the fertility decisions of teenagers. Research suggests that teenage childbearing adversely affects women’s economic outcomes such as the level of completed schooling, labour market participation and wages. 1 Given these deleterious consequences, it is important to understand what factors contribute to this decision. We know that low-educated women are more likely to have a teenage birth but does this imply that policies that increase educational attainment reduce early fertility? In particular, would increasing mandatory educational attainment (through compulsory schooling legislation) encourage women to delay childbearing? If compulsory schooling reduces harmful or risky behaviour, then these factors should be considered when evaluating the benefits of this type of legislation. This article provides evidence on the causal effects of changes in compulsory schooling laws on teenage childbearing using data from the US and Norway. Having data from these two countries provides an interesting contrast: one country is very supportive of teenagers who have children, with extensive financial support (Norway), while the other is much more punitive in its treatment (the US). Understanding the differences in responses to compulsory schooling laws can provide useful information, not only on the direct effect of schooling laws on teenage fertility but also the relative difference across different institutional environments. In the US, there has been extensive variation in compulsory schooling laws across states and over time. Changes in these laws have been used as instruments for education in other contexts by Acemoglu and Angrist (2001), Lochner and Moretti (2004) and Lleras-Muney (2005). There were many changes in minimum schooling requirements between the 1920s and the 1970s; we utilise changes over this entire time period