The Impact of the Type of Education and of Educational Enrolment on First Births

Abstract

In this paper, we re-examine two established findings concerning the effect of education on women's family formation. In addition to considering educational choices as a way of accumulating human capital, we also see them as expressing orientations concerning future roles, and as a place of socialization. This leads us to consider not only the level of education but also the type of education. Furthermore, we investigate whether the timing of departure from education and entering into parenthood are jointly determined. In order to disentangle these issues, we use the Spanish Family and Fertility Survey and apply event history models that take into account the presence of unobserved heterogeneity. Our results show that the type of education is as important as the level of education undertaken by women. More precisely, those academic studies concerned with the care of individuals and/or which emphasize interpersonal skills, in turn have a positive influence on the timing of first birth in Spain, irrespective of the level of education. We also find that both processes are partially determined by common (unmeasured) determinants.