Staying in the Classroom and Out of the Maternity Ward? The Effect of Compulsory Schooling Laws on Teenage Births
利用美国和挪威义务教育法改革带来的教育年限差异，发现强制提高教育年限能显著降低青少年生育率，且结果稳健，表明教育政策对生育决策有溢出效应。
This article 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 US 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 US and Norway, and these estimates are quite robust to various specification checks. These results suggest that legislation aimed at improving educational outcomes may have spillover effects onto the fertility decisions of teenagers. Copyright © The Author(s). Journal compilation © Royal Economic Society 2008.