Abstract
This is the first study exploring the causal effect of education on teenage fertility in Argentina. We exploit an exogenous variation in education from the staggered implementation of the 1993 reform, which increased compulsory schooling from 7 to 10 years. We find a negative overall impact of education on teenage fertility rates, which operates through two complementing channels: a human capital effect (one additional year of schooling causes a decline of 30 births per 1000 girls) and a weaker ‘incapacitation’ effect (a rise of one percentage point in enrollment rate reduces 3 births per 1000 girls).
Highlights
Motherhood represents a major challenge for policymakers in those countries committed to the Millennium Development Goals (Jiménez et al 2011; Williamson 2013)
We can observe that the proportion of students in Polimodal (a 3-year specialized cycle, after mandatory education, created by the reform) had no statistically significant effect on teenage fertility
These results are robust to the addition of several covariates that capture economic activity, unemployment, public expenditure on education and health, and Plan Nacer beneficiaries
Summary
Motherhood represents a major challenge for policymakers in those countries committed to the Millennium Development Goals (Jiménez et al 2011; Williamson 2013). We have an unbalanced panel dataset with 1764 observations at birthcohort/province level for the period 1995–2006, with information about fertility of women ages 13–19, education outcomes for women ages 12–18, implementation of the LFE, and other covariates which capture economic activity, unemployment, public expenditure on education and health, and Plan Nacer beneficiaries.
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