Just A Matter of Time: Empirical Evidence of the Causal Effect of Education on Fertility in Italy

Abstract

This paper assesses the causal effects of education on fertility, allowing for heterogeneity in the effects while controlling for the self-selection of women into education. Identification relies on exogenous variation in schooling induced by a mandatory school reform implemented nationwide in Italy in the early 1960s. The findings suggest that: (i) an increase from primary to junior high school education causes a large proportion of women to postpone early births; (ii) the effect vanishes at older ages and women catch up with the fertility delay before turning 26; (iii) the effect of the increase in education on the number of children a woman has is negligible; (iv) there is large heterogeneity in the fertility behaviour of women.