Abstract
An important factor speculated to affect fertility level is education. Theoretical predictions regarding whether education increases or decreases fertility are ambiguous. This study analyzes the causal impact of higher education on fertility using census data administered by Statistics Korea. To account for the endogeneity of education, this study exploits the Korean higher education reform initiated in 1993 that boosted women’s likelihood of graduating from college. Based on regression kink designs, we find that having a college degree reduces the likelihood of childbirths by 23 percentage points and the total number of childbirths by 1.3. Analyses of possible mechanisms show that labor market–related factors are a significant channel driving the negative effects; female college graduates are more likely to be wage earners and more likely to have high-wage occupations.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Regarding substitution and income effects, Becker and Lewis (1973) argue that income effects might be relatively weak because of a quality-quantity tradeoff when income increases.
We do not discuss the studies that examine the effect of education on teenage fertility because teenage fertility is not a focus of this study.
To the best of our knowledge, no official statistics exist on college completion rates in Korea.
For testing the balance in the share of women, we added male observations to the analysis sample.
The educational reform that we exploit to isolate the causal impact of education on fertility happened in 1993. The analysis periods are from 1988 and 1997, with 1988 to 1992 being the pre-treatment periods and 1993 to 1997 being the post-treatment periods. The women in our sample experienced their childbirths during or after these periods. Thus, our analysis periods do not overlap with the periods in which the total fertility rate dropped very rapidly (i.e., 1970 to 1985). Because the total fertility rate was very stable near 1.5 and 1.6, respectively, for our two analysis periods, we believe that our analysis periods suffer less from confounding factors.
References
Amin, V., & Behrman, J. R. (2014). Do more-schooled women have fewer children and delay childbearing? Evidence from a sample of U.S. twins. Journal of Population Economics, 27, 1–31.
Basu, A. M. (2002). Why does education lead to lower fertility? A critical review of some of the possibilities. World Development, 30, 1779–1790.
Becker, G. S. (1965). A theory of the allocation of time. Economic Journal, 75, 493–517.
Becker, G. S., & Lewis, H. G. (1973). On the interaction between quantity and quality of children. Journal of Political Economy, 81, S279–S288.
Behrman, J. R., & Rosenzweig, M. R. (2002). Does increasing women’s schooling raise the schooling of the next generation? American Economic Review, 92, 323–334.
Belman, D., & Heywood, J. S. (1991). Sheepskin effects in the returns to education: An examination of women and minorities. Review of Economics and Statistics, 73, 720–724.
Black, S. E., Devereux, P. J., & Salvanes, K. G. (2008). Staying in the classroom and out of the maternity ward? The effect of compulsory schooling laws on teenage births. Economic Journal, 118, 1025–1054.
Bloom, D. E., Canning, D., Fink, G., & Finlay, J. E. (2010). The cost of low fertility rate in Europe. European Journal of Population, 26, 141–158.
Bongaarts, J., & Watkins, S. (1996). Social interactions and contemporary fertility transitions. Population and Development Review, 22, 639–682.
Buyinza, F., & Hisali, E. (2014). Microeffects of women’s education on contraceptive use and fertility: The case of Uganda. Journal of International Development, 26, 763–778.
Card, D., Lee, D. S., Zhuan, P., & Weber, A. (2015). Inference on causal effects in a generalized regression kink design. Econometrica, 83, 2453–2483.
Card, D., Lee, D. S., Zhuan, P., & Weber, A. (2016). Regression kink design: Theory and practice. In M. D. Cattaneo & J. C. Escanciano (Eds.), Advances in econometrics (Vol. 38, pp. 341–382). Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing.
Cygan-Rehm, K., & Maeder, M. (2013). The effect of education on fertility: Evidence from a compulsory schooling reform. Labour Economics, 25, 35–48.
Diaz, B. A., Fent, T., Prskawetz, A., & Bernardi, L. (2011). Transition to parenthood: The role of social interaction and endogenous networks. Demography, 48, 559–579.
Dyson, T., & Moore, M. (1983). On kinship structure, female autonomy and demographic behavior in India. Population and Development Review, 9, 35–60.
Fan, J., & Gijbels, I. (1996). Local polynomial modelling and its applications. London, UK: Chapman and Hall.
Grönqvist, H., & Hall, C. (2013). Education policy and early fertility: Lessons from an expansion of upper secondary schooling. Economics of Education Review, 37, 13–33.
Imbens, G. W., & Lemieux, T. (2008). Regression discontinuity design: A guide to practice. Journal of Econometrics, 142, 615–635.
Kim, S., & Lee, J. (2006). Changing facets of Korean higher education: Market competition and the role of the state. Higher Education, 52, 557–587.
Kohler, H. P., Behrman, J. R., & Watkins, S. C. (2001). The density of social networks and fertility decisions: Evidence from S. Nyanza District, Kenya. Demography, 38, 43–58.
Lee, D. S., & Card, D. (2008). Regression discontinuity inference with specification error. Journal of Econometrics, 142, 655–674.
Lee, D. S., & Lemieux, T. (2010). Regression discontinuity designs in Economics. Journal of Economic Literature, 48, 281–355.
Lee, R., Mason, A., & Members of the NTA Network. (2014). Is low fertility really a problem? Population aging, dependency, and consumption. Science, 346, 229–234.
McCrary, J. (2008). Manipulation of the running variable in the regression discontinuity design: A density test. Journal of Econometrics, 142, 698–714.
McCrary, J., & Royer, H. (2011). The effect of female education on fertility and infant health: Evidence from school entry policies using exact date of birth. American Economic Review, 101, 158–195.
Milligan, K. S., Moretti, E., & Oreopoulos, P. (2004). Does education improve citizenship? Evidence from the United States and the United Kingdom. Journal of Public Economics, 88, 1667–1695.
Monstad, K., Propper, C., & Salvanes, K. G. (2008). Education and fertility: Evidence from a natural experiment. Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 110, 827–852.
Oh, J. (2011). The cause of excess schooling and solutions to restructuring college education (KERI Brief 11-20). Seoul: Korea Economic Research Institute.
Oreopoulos, P., & Salvanes, K. G. (2011). Priceless: The nonpecuniary benefits of schooling. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 25(1), 159–184.
Osili, U. O., & Long, B. T. (2008). Does female schooling reduce fertility? Evidence from Nigeria. Journal of Development Economics, 87, 57–75.
Skirbekk, V. (2008). Fertility trends by social status. Demographic Research, 18, 145–180. https://doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2008.18.5
Trostel, P. A. (2004). Returns to scale in producing human capital from schooling. Oxford Economic Papers, 56, 461–484.
Whelan, C. B. (2012). Why smart men marry smart women. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Acknowledgments
We thank the Editors and two referees for invaluable suggestions. We are also indebted to Sangho Kim, Yoonseob Oh, Hisam Kim, Wan-Sub Lim, and other seminar participants at the Korean Institute of Health and Social Affairs. This research was supported by the Korean Institute of Health and Social Affairs, and an earlier version of this paper circulated as the Institute’s working paper (Research Paper 2017-01) under the title, “Analyzing the Causal Impact of Higher Education on Fertility and Potential Mechanisms: Evidence from Regression Kink Designs.”
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sohn, H., Lee, SW. Causal Impact of Having a College Degree on Women’s Fertility: Evidence From Regression Kink Designs. Demography 56, 969–990 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-019-00771-9
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-019-00771-9