Causal estimates of education on fertility, marriage and cohabitation

• Applicant: Dr. Marcus Tamm
• Subject Area: Economic Policy, Applied Economics ; Statistics and Econometrics
• Term: from 2017 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 390218016

Using exogenous variation in levels of education, we will analyze how education influences fertility and mating behavior. In doing so, we focus on several measures of fertility such as the incidence of childlessness, the total number of children or the age at first birth among others. We also look at mating behavior and differentiate between marriage and cohabitation. The analysis will contribute to a large mainly descriptive literature by estimating causal effects. Furthermore, we add to the literature by also looking at non-marital mating behavior. For the analysis, we apply instrumental variable strategies and exploit variation in levels of education that are due to a schooling reform extending compulsory schooling, the opening of universities as well as administrative regulations on age-cutoffs for school entry. By using several instruments we will be able to compare the estimates for different groups of the population.

• DFG Programme: Infrastructure Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 1646: Education as a Lifelong Process. Analysing Data of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS)