The Impact of Female Education on Teenage Fertility: Evidence from Turkey

Abstract

Abstract This paper explores the causal relationship between female education and teenage fertility by exploiting a change in the compulsory schooling law (CSL) in Turkey. Using variation in the exposure to the CSL across cohorts and variation across provinces by the intensity of additional classrooms constructed in the birth provinces as an instrumental variable, the results indicate that primary school completion reduces teenage fertility by 0.37 births and the incidence of teenage childbearing by around 28 percentage points. Exploring heterogeneous effects indicates that female education reduces teenage fertility more in provinces with lower population density and higher agricultural activity. This paper also disentangles intensive- and extensive-margin effects and explores various channels, such as postponing marriage and contraceptive use, linking education and fertility. Finally, this paper demonstrates that there are additional social benefits of education in terms of child health.