Fast Times at Ridgemont High? The Effect of Compulsory Schooling Laws on Teenage Births

Sandra Black, Paul J. Devereaux and Kjell G Salvanes
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Paul J. Devereux

No 10911, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Research suggests that teenage childbearing adversely affects both the outcomes of the mothers as well as those of their children. We know that low-educated women are more likely to have a teenage birth, but does this imply that policies that increase educational attainment reduce early fertility? This paper investigates whether increasing mandatory educational attainment through compulsory schooling legislation encourages women to delay childbearing. We use variation induced by changes in compulsory schooling laws in both the United States and Norway to estimate the effect in two very different institutional environments. We find evidence that increased compulsory schooling does in fact reduce the incidence of teenage childbearing in both the United States and Norway, and these results are quite robust to various specification checks. Somewhat surprisingly, we also find that the magnitude of these effects is quite similar in the two countries. These results suggest that legislation aimed at improving educational outcomes may have spillover effects onto the fertility decisions of teenagers.

JEL-codes: I21 J13 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-ure
Note: CH ED LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10911.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Fast Times at Ridgemont High? The Effect of Compulsory Schooling Laws on Teenage Births (2004)
Working Paper: Fast times at Ridgemont High? The effect of compulsory schooling laws on teenage births (2004)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10911

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10911

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().